Healing the Planet

 

This article in The New York Times got me thinking about compassion. Here is an official of the city of Girona, who, with more than a million people starving in Spain, put padlocks on the supermarket trash bins in his city.

“It’s against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner,” said Eduardo Berloso…. Mr. Berloso proposed the measure last month after hearing from social workers and seeing for himself one evening “the humiliating gesture of a mother with children looking around before digging into the bins.” 

Humiliating, perhaps, but better than starving. What he really meant was that it was humiliating for the image of the tourist town of Girona. 

To do him justice, he did arrange for vouchers for licensed pantries and soup kitchens to be passed out where people come to forage for tossed-out food, but he ignored the fact that many of these people are not accustomed to hand-outs and would rather go out at night to comb through trash bins, or to food pantries in neighboring towns to avoid being seen by anyone who knows them. Most of these people would rather have jobs.

But Berloso can't imagine others’ feelings. He can't feel their shame. It is a failure of compassion but also, of understanding. Maybe empathy is a better word, since it seems to imply both compassion and understanding.

My first thought was that there ought to be tests given for compassion, for empathy, before anyone is permitted to run for office. But how would you determine that? What would that test be?

As usual, the minute I got into the shower, an answer came. By listening to people’s stories. By observing their actions. By listening to their stories which will tell you about their actions.

The three questions you’d want to ask are:

1)   How does he or she treat animals?

2)   How does he or she treat other humans?

3)   How does he or she treat others’ spiritual beliefs?

I’m thinking of the approaching presidential election in the U.S.A. Which brings to mind three true stories about the Republican party candidate, Mitt Romney.

He tied his Irish setter dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a 12-hour drive to Canada. Okay, maybe not the actual dog, but a kennel containing the dog. Now, imagine you are Seamus. (Shame-us) On returning home, you too might wander away. 

In prep school, he spearheaded an attack on a gay student, John Lauber, whose bleached-blond hair he didn’t like, wrestled him down, and cut off his hair. Now imagine you are that boy.

One of the bullies involved encountered Lauber years later, and apologized. Lauber said, “It was horrible,” and described how frightened he was during the attack. He never forgot it. He died of cancer, after an apparently peripatetic life--and according to his sister, never stopped bleaching his hair. 

Romney wants to remove the rights of women concerning their own bodies, their own health, their own reproductive decisions, in spite of the fact that a majority of American women do not share the fundamentalist belief that men should control women. Imagine you are the woman who has been raped and is told she cannot have an abortion. Or the man whose wife will die without one. Or the mother whose child desperately needs medical care which she cannot afford--she can’t even afford health insurance.

A spiritual matter? Oh yes it is. The need to control women is seriously disrespectful of their autonomy and comes almost entirely from men (and women) who believe in patriarchal religions or are still living as if they do. If you cannot picture goddesses as well as gods or God, that is your model of ultimate value. Men have divine power; women must be subjected to that power.

Disrespect for animals.

Disrespect for humans.

Disrespect for others’ spiritual beliefs.

Well, that’s simple. Not qualified to hold office.

 ***

 

That Portuguese water dog, Bo, in President Barack Obama’s family seems pretty content to me.

I’ve never heard a story about President Obama’s disrespectful treatment of another human being. Have you?

Obama doesn’t mock spiritual beliefs that are not his own, and is respectful of Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Jews, agnostics and atheists, as far as I know. He doesn’t seem to believe that men should control the destiny of women, including women who believe that abortion is unthinkable. He respects others’ spiritual beliefs.

 

Last week Richard and I were lying in bed watching clouds flow by above our zinc roof, and talking about this and that. He told me about a terrific book he’d just finished, Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” He talked about the closeness of fundamentalism and patriarchy that is uncovered in the book.

That’s a subject that interests me, so I said I’d like to read it.

He said he hadn’t recommended the book to me, because he knows how much I hate violence, and it was very violent.

But I read it anyway. It’s the story of a family of fundamentalist brothers who have broken away from the Mormon church, but are shaping their new sect on the Mormon principle of personal divine revelation, and a return to polygamy. The youngest one is married to Brenda, who was a top TV anchorwoman, until—naturally, in a patriarchal marriage—she has to give it up.

But she is educated, smart, warm, fearless, strong and outspoken, the least submissive of all the brothers’ wives. When another of the brothers, Ron, becomes more and more fanatical, crazed, and abusive to his wife, Dianna, she talks with Brenda, who encourages her to divorce, and Dianna summons the courage to leave him. 

Brenda continues to tell the other wives to stand up for their rights and think for themselves. She refuses to obey the demands of the six brothers. What can a man do with a disobedient woman? With absolute conviction in the rightness of their act, which they claim God ordered through a personal revelation, Ron and Dan murder Brenda and the infant daughter of one of their own brothers.

The story of these brothers and other fundamentalist Mormons and how they treated their wives, how they married and raped pubescent girls, and abused and crushed the spirits of the women in their lives was repulsive. These are men who claim they receive direct revelation from God, vision that a woman cannot receive, men who cannot be dissuaded if they hear voices telling them to marry their wives’ daughters from earlier marriages, to murder a wife who dares to question them—it’s the ultimate power trip. Empathy does not exist in their world.

My sleep was disturbed for days. I couldn’t finish the book. But based on what I did read, I’d say it’s the best book on the unholy alliance between fundamentalism and patriarchy I’ve ever read.

I think we’re lost on this planet unless we give animals, women and other marginalized people, and, yes, goddesses, equal power. The planet’s health depends on it.

Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois  

Surrealist Café Gathering #3: “Before I Die I Want to ______________”

 

“Preparing for death is one of the most empowering things
you can do. Thinking about death clarifies your life.”

                                    —Candy Chang

We are weaving a rich tapestry as we live,
of colors, images and moods.
This week, the black of death,
the turquoise of art,
the red of love and friendship.

I recently saw a Ted Talks video given by performance artist and urban planner, Candy Chang. It is a six-minute meditation on death and what matters in life.  You can watch it here: 

Her voice is low and soulful, full of gravitas. She did a performance piece in New Orleans after a great friend died, a woman who was like a mother to her. She found an abandoned building near where she lives, and put up a giant chalkboard, on which was written many times:

“Before I die I want to __________________,” with a space for people to fill in.

In 24 hours every line on four sides of the building was filled in. One man dressed as a pirate wrote, “I want to be tried for piracy.”

We’d like to celebrate our hundredth post of Paris Play next Saturday by asking you to participate in our third Surrealist Café. Just complete the sentence, “Before I die I want to __________.”

E-mail your completed sentence to us here by midnight, Paris time next Wednesday, September 19, and we will publish your answers on Saturday, September 22, at the Autumn Equinox. You may sign yours, or send it anonymously. But only one sentence, please. Don't post it as a comment to this story; use the mail link here.

The other night at dinner with three visiting friends, we talked of visitations. I told the story of my father’s beautiful death on September 11, 2006. It was beautiful because he fulfilled all his dreams, and was surrounded by people who adore him at the end. He appeared as a hawk the next morning outside my parents’ home, perched in a Palo Verde tree gazing at my mother and three sisters and me.

On September 11 this year, I had the atypical experience of not knowing the date until, after an art opening of the wonderful French journal, Soldes, Richard and I went to dinner with a new friend at an Indian restaurant where you can eat a good meal for five euros. That’s about $6.50. (Thanks, Demian.)

At every table around us were two or three Indian or African men. A French-speaking couple sat at a table near the door, the only other woman in the place. I figured that any Indian man in the neighborhood who was married was probably at home eating a home-cooked meal.

As we scarfed down rice and vegetables (and for the carnivores, lamb), samosas and naan, and brainstormed some new approaches to writing, photography and film, we became aware of a strange repetition of images on the Indian channel on the ceiling-level TV. Osama bin Laden, the twin towers falling, over and over again. I realized at once what day it was.

So many people who died in the falling towers in New York City, and in the United States' retaliatory efforts across the Muslim world since then, did not have a full span of years in which to fulfill their dreams. That is the tragedy.

We wish every one of you 100 years in which to realize your dream.  And tell us, what is that dream?

Pussy Riot and the Power of Myth

Distressed at the notion that the three female punk rockers from the six-member group, Pussy Riot, were being slapped down way too hard for their anti-Putin protest in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral on February 21, we joined 300 other Parisians this broiling noon hour (Friday, the 17th) in a demonstration of solidarity at the famous Niki St. Phalle fountain next to the Pompidou Museum. (That's the fountain in our masthead, above.) 

As the world knows, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and her band-mates Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina, wearing knitted balaclavas, burst into the Orthodox church with three other band members (who are currently in hiding) and performed a song beseeching the Virgin Mary to oust the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, who was standing for re-election.

The choice of venue, and of the Virgin, were a protest against the way the church has become, in the eyes of the band and other Russians, an arm of the Putin State during his twelve years in power.

Pussy Riot specializes in sudden, often illegal public performances, of the kind associated with flash mobs, including one in Moscow's Red Square. In a freer tradition, Pussy Riot would be recognized as the honored form of Trickster we call the court jester, the holy fool whose job/art it is to tell truth to power. 

The State was not amused.

The women, all in their twenties, were arrested and charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," because their performance was called, by the government, a hate crime against the church. Pussy Riot called it free speech.

We call it myth. You don't have to believe in myth; it unfolds all around you, whether or not you believe in it.

In these last few days of Leo, with the Sun and Moon both in the sign, we've noticed many cat posts on Facebook. We're spending a lot of time with Marley, just admiring his feline beauty. And today, we're in a public square awaiting the verdict on Pussy Riot. 

I've been re-reading Candide. Just imagine what Voltaire would have to say about this miserable witch-burning still going on in Russia. Enlightened Eighteenth Century philosophers, writers and politicians in England, the U.S. and France, were clear about the need to keep church and state separate, and to allow free speech, without repressive repercussions from religion or the government.

In an earlier age, the band, Pussy Riot, would have been burned as witches. There is a reason why cats and witches are connected. Cats are creatures of mystery. They are beautiful, not utilitarian. You don't see cats out herding cattle and sheep.

Zoologist Desmond Morris said, "Cats are artists, dogs are soldiers." Soldiers of the state like Putin don't understand artists or witches. Witches were probably early feminists, equally versed in magic and nature. They wanted to transform the world, as artists do. As these singers did, appealing to the Virgin Mary to stop Putin. 

On a mythical level, the Virgin Mary is the goddess, Demeter. She is an earth goddess. In earlier times, women addressed the goddesses with such protests, and no man would dream of silencing them. 

Despite worldwide protests, and appeals for leniency by creative artists ranging from Danny De Vito to Yoko Ono to Paul McCartney, the women, who were jailed for the five months awaiting trial, faced up to seven years in prison.

Our Paris demonstration, as well as others across Europe, were held at the time the court was to release its verdict. Organized by the French chapter of Amnesty International, aided by the International Federation for Human Rights, this Paris iteration attracted a cross-section of Parisians, including members of the local Federation of Anarchists.  They carried black flags, and didn't mix much.

Despite the lack of shade, and an eighty-eight degree Fahrenheit temperature (31 Celsius), the fashion for the day was the balaclava, in spandex, leopard, or you-name-it, with or without slogans.

While the length of sentence was not handed down before the demonstration ended, the crowd was told by the event's Amnesty International host, who was monitoring the Internet on his iPhone, that the members of Pussy Riot were found guilty, expected information that was met with a chorus of boos.

Later Friday, the judge, Marina Sirovaya, sentenced the trio to two years in prison.

Astrology is just the time dimension, the seasonal aspect of myth. And today, as Leo draws to a close, the pussy cats are rioting.

Dragon

A great green dragon lies to the West, watching over the town. I look up at her ruffled spine, the green and gold of her flanks, and see her dragon breath drifting down from above. It looks like the mist above Chinese mountain peaks.

But no, it’s smoke from the Colorado fires, beyond the Rocky Mountains at the edge of town.

I’m standing outside the Whole Foods Market on Pearl Street in Boulder. What has brought me here, so far from Richard and our Paris home?

Love and health. Health and love.

On July 4, 2012, great news came from physicists at CERN in Geneva about the Higgs boson particle: the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. It is responsible for life on earth, human beings, the stars—everything in the universe, and the forces that work between them. Without this miracle, we would have no weight, would be ricocheting around at the speed of light.

This energy field that physicists have been predicting since 1964 can be seen from other perspectives, too. The perspective of love, for instance. The power of love to transform someone’s health, for instance, my sister, Jane’s.

Here are a few of the elements in Jane’s energy field:

Her daughter, Rachel, helping her to get to medical appointments and being vigilantly protective of her health.

Her daughter, Bayu, flying in from Wellington, New Zealand for a month and planning to return this fall when she has completed her art and design studies.

Her mother and four siblings ready to help in whatever ways we can.

A caring, expert Western medical team.

A brilliant acupuncturist and sage, Dr. Maoshing Ni, prescribing Chinese herbal teas and Eastern healing.

A gifted local acupuncturist.

A friend, Liza, flying in for several days.

Friends in Boulder and beyond.

Friend, Susan, connecting Jane to a healing group who are meditating on her health.

Jane’s own excellent health habits: yoga, walking and eating well.

A town where, for an entire month, I didn’t encounter a single surly or obstructive attitude (although the motorcyclist who honked at me as I fumbled for my ringing phone while driving was entirely justified).

A town that’s so wholesome—5,430 feet high (great for the lungs and heart), with clean air, open protected space, cycling, hiking, mountain climbing, free yoga classes, healthy food, people drunk on endorphins—that it might be the healthiest town in the U. S.

A town where the restaurant food is astonishingly good: the scallops and truffles at Riffs, the paella at the Mediterranean, the chicken salad at Brasserie Ten Ten, the vegetable omelette at Tangerine, the Coquilles St.-Jacques at Arugula, the vegetable tempura and beer at Hapa Sushi Grill, the guacamole and enchiladas Veracruz at Cantina Laredo. I haven’t had a bad meal yet. Even the gourmet cheeseburger at Salt the Bistro I ate with Rachel and Brandon (the first such meal I’ve had in some twenty years, making me feel like a real American again) was delicious.

Jane seems healthier by the day, surrounded as she is by an energy field of healing and love.

All this in a larger context that’s frightening: the fires in Colorado were so extreme this year that half the fire fighters in the nation were brought in to fight them. They have resulted in the loss of 346 homes, 32,000 people evacuated from their homes, and are the most destructive in Colorado history. When I last checked on July 13, they were still not contained.

A map of weather conditions across the U. S. showed an alarming degree of heat, dryness, high winds and out-of-control fires in western states.

We know there is an energy field all around us which affects us and which we affect.

Can we extend this force of love and healing beyond our families and friends, and offer it to the whole planet?

How?

How can we do this?

Sarkozy, C'est Fini!

Sunday night, at Place Bastille, where at least a hundred thousand jubilant people gathered under an overcast sky to welcome a new president, it all came down to two chants.

Sarkozy, c'est fini! (SAHR-ko-zee SAY-fee-nee)!

Hollande gagne! (OH-lan GAHN-yea)!

"Sarkozy is finished," and "Hollande won."

So ended the hard-fought and often nasty election campaign which saw France turn for the first time in sixteen years to the Socialists, making the center/right Nicolas Sarkozy a single-term president. 

This was the scene a few seconds past eight p.m., when the TV station being broadcast on the stadium-sized screen at Place Bastille flashed François Hollande's photograph, over the percentage of votes (51.7%) that exit polls showed him receiving. The jubilation was reminiscent of Barack Obama's 2008 Grant Park rally on election night in Chicago:

In addition to our exclusive Paris Play video, here are faces of the evening captured in stills, with our impressions, and a word or two about what we think could come next.

A line of (mostly) women dancing and ululating with glee

A father and daughter celebrate

And plenty of time for silliness

Each time the screen showed a picture of the outgoing president, seen here conceding defeat, the huge crowd booed...

...or worse

The young and lithe climbed to the base of the famous Bastille column

Thousands upon thousands of revelers boiled out of the Metro stations...

...and boogied on to Place Bastille, swelling the crowd to at least a hundred thousand strong

He was disappointed that the police forbade him to ride his motorcycle into the huge crowd...

...while these folks on rue St. Antoine cheered the celebrants from their safe second-floor perch

The magazine L'Express was hot off the presses within two hours, while the president-elect didn't arrive to address the waiting crowd until 12:45 the next morning

There were plenty of homemade signs, and the crowd was overwhelmingly young

The ubiquitous image of Che Guevara, found wherever leftist internationalists gather

In 2008, when Obama and his supporters celebrated in Grant Park, they did so under a growing economic cloud, the result of the Bush administration's mishandling of the American economy, which meant the celebrations had to be short, because the United States was in crisis. The economy cast a pall that Obama still labors under; as he runs for a second term, the Republicans work to foster the lie that the Great Recession is the Democratic president's fault.  

Three-and-a-half years after Grant Park, incoming president Hollande labors under a similar cloud. The European economy is worse off than the United States' (though the entire world economy is yoked together), and France suffers from record high unemployment, as its citizens chafe at the austerity measures the European Union is demanding.

Hollande's victory flies in the face of that demand. He believes (as does American economist Paul Krugman) that austerity is a ridiculous policy in the face of a recession, and that economies must be nurtured with strong government measures to increase employment and strengthen social programs.

The UK newspaper, The Independent, which doesn't like Hollande, grumps that Sarkozy's defeat "...poses once again the question of whether any national leader, of any party, can impose the degree of austerity deemed necessary by the financial markets and remain electable." One of the messages that both left and right were united on this year was that "financial markets" were not governments; the French wanted French elected officials, not Brussels-based European Union bureaucrats, to make economic and political decisions for their country.

Whatever the next weeks, months, or years of a Hollande presidency have to offer, the basic question is, what kind of a world will this young will-be voter, carried by her mother to witness this critical historical moment, find herself in when she comes of age?