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.

It Begins with a Call - Part 1

I have been working on a piece of writing for some time now.  It is a work in progress, and I really have no idea where it is going.  But I'm taking a deep breath, taking the risk, and starting to share it.

This story begins with breaking a lineage.  This story begins with a fire.  This story begins in childhood.  This story begins with a dream.  This story begins with a longing.  This story begins in elder years.  This story begins with a call.  This story begins with an image.  This story begins with fear.  This story began centuries ago.  This story begins with a story.  All of these beginnings are true.  Or maybe none of them is true.  What is true is that this story does not have an ending, no happily ever after.  It may or may not ever have an ending, except for the inevitable death of the writer of the story.  This story is what I have.  Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that this story is actually many stories within stories.

           

Let’s say that it begins with a call.  Things do begin with a call.  Sometimes you hear it, and sometimes you even follow it.  If you don’t, something dies inside, and a particular way forward shuts itself off to you.  The call is always surprising, fresh, original.  Where does it come from? Spirit, intuition, the thread you’re given to follow, your dreams, your parents’ dreams, out of left field?  Sometimes it emerges out of memory, out of what has transpired in this life, or in one’s parents’ lives or their parents’ lives.  It may lead away from these, or deeper into them. 

           

For instance, in my life, I continued and furthered the breaking away from thousands of years of lineage that my parents initiated.  I am close to one hundred percent Jewish, all the way back.  My parents, however, joined no temple and never attended one other than for the requisite Bar Mitzvahs and weddings.  I always believed they simply chose to reject organized religion.  Someone must have told me that; it was the story that I believed.  My older sister recently informed me that it was all her fault.  Our parents had tried to enroll her in Sunday school, but the synagogue gatekeepers refused to place her in the higher-level class that my parents requested and felt she warranted.  So, they left in a huff and never came back, and neither my sister nor I got formal religious education.  I’d never heard that story before. 

We did celebrate Hanukkah and Passover, and my father spent Yom Kippurs sitting alone in the back yard (or later on the patio of our house in Miami), praying or contemplating, or whatever it was he did out there.  When I came of age, I left even these observances behind.  The traditions had a fond, familial feeling, but not enough significance for me to carry them forward.  I’ll always be Jewish in my bones, but I no longer carry the lineage, and my sons even less.  I feel a certain wistful regret about this, but, again, not enough to draw me back into the fold.

           

And yet, despite my disconnection from religion, from early on, there was something ineffable and intangible that hovered around the edges of my consciousness.  There was an inkling of another reality, a murmur of a call.  I didn’t understand that.  I didn’t know what it was that I felt.  At night, alone in the darkness of my bedroom, before my older sister was sent up to join me, I sometimes had an experience.  The dark took on a quality of brightness.  There was no light, but there was an indescribable brightness to the dark, followed by a vision.  It was always the same vision: a garden swing, double-sided, in an arbor.  The light was golden and ethereal.  A child in pale blue corduroy overalls sat on the swing, and perhaps others. Maybe the child was me. I always felt a sense of peace at seeing this scene, maybe even euphoria.  The way I described it to myself was, “I feel clean.”  I never told anyone about this. I’m not sure why; perhaps I knew they wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to minimize its power.  It didn’t happen frequently, and I couldn’t will it to happen.

In waking life, at age four, my ballet teacher planted the seed of a story in my awareness, and, like a magical vine, it grew and twined itself around my being.  As the years passed, it beckoned and called and sang and tugged.  Its name was Persephone.

Camus said, "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."   Persephone was mine.

My Persephone SoulCollage® card

Breath in. Breath out: A SoulCollage® Story

Most days I do readings with my SoulCollage® cards.  Sometimes it's just a single card as an orientation or focus for the day.  Other times I'll have a particular question that I draw cards to answer.  It's rare for me to feel unsatisfied with what I get, and often it's jaw-droppingly accurate.  But there's another way I use my cards, and that is as writing prompts.

Today I pulled these 3 cards in order to tell a story:

This is what emerged:

Things were beginning to get clear.  By sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she got in touch with the waters and the sands drifting in the wind.  She hunkered down further, feeling the rocks beneath her anchoring her to the earth, sensing the covering of protection around her and the open way to new life.  Breath in.  Breath out.  Clarity.

The world around was going to hell in a handbasket.  (She wondered where that expression came from.)  The air was growing toxic.  Even the waters gave no purchase to the flocking birds.  Saints of the old religion still watched, but they were darkening and fading away.  Soon they would be no more than the grains of drifting sands.  The bird calls were growing deafening as they searched for a safe place.  Breath in.  Breath out.

Climbing her way out of her thoughts, she had to ascend through the father line, for wasn't it the fathers who had brought all of this on?  Even the good fathers, the blessing fathers, who in one sense could not be termed culpable, even they bore some responsibility.  They praised women.  They may even have revered them, loved them, honored them.  But they did not truly listen to the women or regard their values as primary.  They assumed that women could not really know.  

But bearing children provides another perspective.  Mothering women cannot view children as worthy sacrifices.  That story goes way back, at least as far as Abraham and Isaac.  An old story the fathers tell of devotion to their God.  Women (other than those persuaded or forced to adhere to the ways of the fathers) never accepted that story.  Their Goddess - Asherah, Isis, Astarte, Demeter - however they named Her - had different stories.  Yes, the Great Mother could be fierce and even frightening, but Her ways always were in support of life.

So, sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she breathed and prayed for a new way, a new life, a resurrection for two-legged ones.  But even more so for the earth itself.  Even if humans had, so far, ruined everything they touched, maybe it was not too late.  There were still rocks, water, birds, and the sands drifting in the wind.

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I am holding one last SoulCollage® session before Fall, next Sunday, June 25th here in Oakland.  Our theme this month is "Radical Joy."  There's still space; let me know if you're interested.

Wings

          In memory of Leona Tockey and Fay Distiller 

          I never saw wings on a person before.  Never even knew we had them.  And then I went to visit my friend who was dying.  Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a gentle waving motion and something delicate and ethereal emerging out of her back.  By keeping my focus soft and my head moving from side to side, I could see that there were actually two configurations, one on each side of her body.  They were translucent, many-colored, segmented and beautiful.  They were large, I realized, but incomplete, unfinished. The furthest edges were fuzzy and faded away, but they grew as I watched; bits were joining onto the ends. 

            They appeared to be wings that were in the process of growing, but not by pushing out fully formed from the shoulder blades; they were being added onto at the tips. 

            I realized at that moment that my friend’s death would come when her wings were complete.  It would not be long.

            From then on, I have been able to see people’s wings, emerging from their backs.  The wings’ stages of development are completely independent of an individual’s age. But no matter the size, they are all beautiful and unique.

            I have since come to understand that a person’s wings are invisible to most people because they belong to the soul, which is also invisible, and whose true home is in the otherworld.  Every now and then someone’s vision opens up or refines itself in some unknown and unknowable way, and that person can see the wings.  Why, and why me, I have no idea.

            Apparently, the work of the soul in this world is growing these wings.  The soul then uses the wings to fly back into the otherworld at the end of the person’s life, and to display the beauty and particularity of this incarnation when it gets there. 

            Some babies have mostly-formed wings right away, and these beings are not in the world for long.  There is a simplicity and loveliness to these wings, and also a great sadness in witnessing them.  Seeing wings means discovering those who are close to leaving; their nearly complete wings give it away. 

            Every act of soul-making adds to one’s wings. Manifesting purpose, bringing beauty, being of service, giving life, overcoming obstacles – all of these things bring bits and blazes of color to the wings.   Even negative and harmful acts add to one’s wings.  These segments often appear dark or smoky. 

            A person’s history could be read in his or her wings, if only one knew how. 

            Interestingly, I cannot see my own wings, nor the wings of those closest to me.  I’m glad for that.  It would not be fitting or helpful to foretell the death of one’s mate or child.  I wouldn’t want to know, though I am curious by nature.  Of course, I do think about my own, though.  Sometimes I wonder,  “Would do anything differently if I knew how much time I had left?”

Hecate's Version of the Story

Since I claim to be hanging out with Hecate, I owe her some air time.  So, here is a tale she and I wrote (which will hopefully make sense to those of you who know Persephone's story):

            Those Olympians!  They think they have the corner on the market.  Well, power will do that to you.  Those of us who are older and who have been there know that power is like the tide – it comes and goes.  And when it goes, you’d better have something else to hold onto.

            Me?  I watch a lot.  I’m an observer, you might say.  I get very quiet.  My power, such as it is, comes from that.  I’ve grown comfortable with the dark.  No one else seems to want it, so I’ve claimed the territory.  Even Selene, who reigns in the dark, is the light there.  I am the dark in the dark.  When travelers reach the place where roads diverge, I am there to insist that they choose: the way of authenticity or the way culture prescribes.  You can see why humans have come to fear me.

            You wonder what happened with Persephone.  I use her name, her own name, notice, while others call her “Demeter’s daughter.  I did that, too, before it all happened.  Not now.  She’s earned the right to her name.  Many say it means “The Destroyer.”  That’s nonsense.  She destroys nothing.  That’s simply mortals’ fear of death speaking.  I prefer “She Who Shines in the Darkness.”  She has grown into power and continues to do so.

            Well, I was going to tell you what happened.  It started in the borderlands.  You see, I live on the edges, the borders.  It is where I have to be.  In my cave, I heard a cry but was too late to see anything when I went out to investigate.  Some days later I saw Demeter out searching.  She looked wretched – not her usual state, for sure – and I finally put two and two together.  I suggested to her that Helios would have seen something.  In her distress she wasn’t thinking clearly and it hadn’t occurred to her, so I took her to him.  I don’t think he meant to be hurtful, but, as I said, those Olympians are so full of themselves that they don’t think.  When he told her that Zeus had allowed Hades to take her daughter away to be his bride, she was furious and ran off.  I let her go.  There was little I could do for her at that point, and I knew she had to work things out for herself.

            When I saw the earth begin to dry up, I realized what had happened.  It was the perfect response, Demeter removing all fertility from the green world.  I disliked the suffering, though, and also how dusty and ugly everything became.  She forced Zeus’ hand, and I was secretly happy to see it.  It isn’t my way to blatantly challenge those male power-hoarders, but, oh, I am glad when they receive some comeuppance.  That’s a little petty of me, I guess.  Oh, well!

            So, I waited to see what would happen.  When Persephone returned, I went to see them, mother and daughter.  I don’t ordinarily meddle, but I did feel I had a role in this series of events, albeit a small one.  And I had been terribly concerned for the girl.  For Demeter, too, but I knew she would eventually find her way.  I’m pleased to say they both welcomed me.

            I didn’t know the child well before, but I could see the shift in her, and I could foresee the changes to come.  She was moving into her own power.  Demeter may not have noticed – she was just glad to have her daughter back, even if it wasn’t permanent.  But this young woman (not a child any longer) was going to assume great and grave duties (no pun intended).  An idea struck me and I voiced it without hesitation.  I offered to precede and follow her.  I had, have, things to share, things to teach, about dark and light ways, and companionship to offer.  You could call me her mentor.  Yes.  I won’t speak of what passes between us – that is between us.  Suffice it to say, I have taken on this role, and I believe it has served her.  And, if I am completely honest, me, too.  it has served me, too.

Why This Is My Grief

            Loss, exile.  We stood at a crossroads and didn’t know which way to go, and whichever way we chose didn’t matter.  Neither way led home.  Home, such as it was, was behind us.  Home was no more.  Well, that was nothing new.  This pogrom was only the current one.

            Before this, there was more loss.  More exile.  The warm, dry valleys, the rocky peaks, the welcoming seas had all been left for the cold, forested, embittered land of looking over our shoulders.

            Always, the men carrying the Torah, trying to appear competent and strong, insisting we were the chosen people, all the while feeling emasculated, incompetent, ashamed.  All the wisdom of the holy books could hardly make up for this.  Even the rabbis were speechless.

            And the women?  Frightened, feeling like the beasts of burden and the outcasts that they were.  And, even more, in their blood and bones (if not in conscious memory) was the knowledge of how much loss there had truly been.  Prior loss.  Asherah buried among the trees they would never in their lifetimes see.  They had long ago forgotten what it was like to dance and pray in the sacred groves, to bare their breasts and proudly cup them in their hands to honor the holy one's fertility and nurturing, and their own by association.  Yes, loss and exile and grief permeated their blood, endlessly cycling in their bodies, becoming so ingrained so much a part of who they were that they could no longer remember.

            So, if you ask me why this is the grief I carry, I can tell you that the blood has been singing to me, calling to me, whispering to me that grief is the response to life in this body.  Only now am I beginning to hear its message and understand.  Only now am I beginning to allow myself to feel it.  Numbness made sense as a survival strategy before, but one cannot be both numb and awake.  Feeling the grief is necessary, and only the first step.

            Long ago I left the ways of the men’s religion, of the Torah and the rabbis.  But I cannot leave what lives in my bones and blood, nor would I wish to.  I honor them.  I bow to them.  I thank them for the gift of this life.  And I say, “I will draw on the origins, of the oldest of the old ways.  And I will bring in other ways and make my own way.  But this is the story of my grief.  Well, at least it is one of the stories.  The beginning one.”