I recently encountered a Wiccan who has a devotional relationship with some Hellenic deities and she shared with me that she is regularly told by those on the reconstructionist side that she is not worshipping Them correctly. As someone who has a foot in both worlds, this sticks in my craw. My understanding from working with the Hellenic Theoi over decades within the context of this incarnation is that Their goal is to be back in relationship with us in powerful ways. So I strongly believe that those who are creating uncertainty and hesitation amongst those They have called are working against Their divine will. I'm not sure, specifically, who I am addressing...but I've seen enough of this often enough to know it is a problem. If you recognize yourself in this description, stop it!
What is the point of religion? It is to build and maintain relationships with the unseen, especially the gods. All of the other stuff is means to that end. Now, I am a huge, huge, huge proponent of doing the research, learning as much as one can, and judiciously using what has been learned. Many of the old forms work well (and work in adaption) because they have thought forms behind them that, through centuries of repetitive use, act as a signal and calling card to particular Great Ones. It is fabulous when you can harness that. It is also not necessary.
Similarly, I always say that it is essential to get to know the Great Ones you are intending to work with and to have a thorough understanding of who and what They are and what They want. This helps you deepen the connection and provides a behavioral understanding for you about how to interact with Them. But They are BIG. They are much bigger than us. They can adapt to our behavior and forgive us our confusion.
As far as I am concerned, if one of the Great Ones has called you, and it is not a one-time kind of thing, but clearly one of Them is reaching out to be in relationship with you, it is a really good idea for you to go do the research and be sure that you want to say "yes" before you agree to Their work. No harm, no foul if you want to say no. You are a Divine being living in a body and have free will. So, get a clear understanding. I'm also going to say that there is some wisdom in only accepting life-work from one or two at the most. You really can't serve as a priest/ess of more than that and do a good job of it....although you can do particular acts for some of the others. That's a limitation based on our energy and time. But if you really have been called and you decide to say "yes" then don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
All of the other stuff is means, not ends. It is good to learn it. If you have taken up that kind of work, you should learn as much as you can...but it is better to learn it judiciously rather than uncritically. After all, cultures shift and change. Our written records for ancient Hellenic religion run from about 800 BCE to 500 CE - that is a long time and any living culture shifts and changes.
I have said many times in various contexts that if you call to the Great Ones and They answer - whatever form you use - you are doing it right. If you call the Great Ones and They do not answer, it doesn't matter how ritually perfect or historically accurate your form, you are not doing it right.
I consider what I am doing to be rebirthing rather than reconstruction, specifically because I am not even trying to carefully reconstruct historically accurate forms. I learn everything that I can and take inspiration and modify ancient forms and bring them into rituals because doing so taps old energy currents and helps...but if I am doing my own inner and devotional work (and I am) then They come even without that.
I use the lore to get a really good understanding of what these Great Ones want...of what their agendas are. I use that to inform how I interact with Them. For example, I know the old sacrifices to Poseidon, but I'm not going to do meat sacrifices. I don't raise animals and it would be inappropriate for me to do so in my current circumstances. I can walk to a grocery store and buy meat vs. carefully raising an animal and then going through the slaughter and giving up most of the meat on that animal to the community. As a sacrifice, it doesn't have the same meaning it would in a different context. But what I know, what I absolutely KNOW, is that Poseidon cares for the seas. So my sacrifice for Poseidon is that whenever I see plastic lying on the ground, knowing that without my intervention it will go into a gutter and end up polluting the ocean, I pick it up and throw it away and tell Poseidon, while I am doing it, that it is in honor of Him. THAT gets His attention. That helps me build relationship with Him. I am both doing something in alignment with His agenda, in service of what He cares about, and I am calling Him to mind over and over and over again, strengthening His form and His power as an intercessor for the health of the seas. Obviously, you will never find any reference in the lore to picking up plastic trash, but it works and is important.
This, to me, is the difference. I do believe in the power of research. I believe it is essential to understand as much as you can about the Great Ones you are working with. I think there is a tremendous amount of power to help your magick and worship if you can use references back to old thought forms and tap those lines of repeated activity and pull them into your work. But in the end, it is about the gods. It is about our relationships with the gods. And that means that it has to be about now and our current context. They want to be in relationship with us and it is an act of impiety to inhibit or discourage that relationship from one who has been called to Them. We should be empowering each other to build these relationships, even if those relationships look different than ours. That is the work that all of us are called to perform.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Saturday, March 5, 2016
The Importance of Trusting Experts
This is really a FB post that just got so long that I am putting it here. It is not particularly spiritual, although I think the contemplation of where do we and should we trust is important. It is about the Hillary Clinton email scandal and my concerns with the way in which this is being conducted.
My biggest issue with the Clinton email scandal is an issue about trust...but it is not, for me, about trusting Hillary. It is about the fact that in order for any of us to function, including the President of the United States, we have to be able to and allowed to trust experts and that, when this is made impossible, no one can function and no one can govern. None of us are self-sufficient and to think that we are is narcissism.
So, for example, I am the chair of the Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects in my university. In that capacity, I approve (or deny approval) to research projects, some of which are not minimal risk. In other words, for some of the research proposals I review, it is possible that people can get hurt or die and what I have to evaluate is whether or not that risk is acceptable in light of the potential benefits and whether the mitigations to those risks are sufficient. What I am competent and capable of doing is identifying when data security is vitally important for protecting people...as I said, sometimes potentially protecting their lives. If you are going to a refugee camp to interview people about how they are being treated by authorities...that is potentially life threatening and the inability of anyone in power to figure out who said something critical is vitally important. So, I can say, "you must have rock solid data security." What I am not able to do is to say what a rock solid data security plan looks like. For that, I refer that piece of the analysis to our data security experts. I have to trust them. The researcher has to trust them. Both the researcher and I understand well the gravity of the situation (the researcher's competence in understanding risk is part of what is evaluated before permission is given) - but we have to trust (and obey) the expert counsel on how to set up and use a data security plan. If we were at a point where we could not trust in the expertise of data security experts, all such research just couldn't get done...or worse, you have non-experts trusting their own knowledge over listening to expertise and coming up with inadequate solutions.
So, for example, I am the chair of the Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects in my university. In that capacity, I approve (or deny approval) to research projects, some of which are not minimal risk. In other words, for some of the research proposals I review, it is possible that people can get hurt or die and what I have to evaluate is whether or not that risk is acceptable in light of the potential benefits and whether the mitigations to those risks are sufficient. What I am competent and capable of doing is identifying when data security is vitally important for protecting people...as I said, sometimes potentially protecting their lives. If you are going to a refugee camp to interview people about how they are being treated by authorities...that is potentially life threatening and the inability of anyone in power to figure out who said something critical is vitally important. So, I can say, "you must have rock solid data security." What I am not able to do is to say what a rock solid data security plan looks like. For that, I refer that piece of the analysis to our data security experts. I have to trust them. The researcher has to trust them. Both the researcher and I understand well the gravity of the situation (the researcher's competence in understanding risk is part of what is evaluated before permission is given) - but we have to trust (and obey) the expert counsel on how to set up and use a data security plan. If we were at a point where we could not trust in the expertise of data security experts, all such research just couldn't get done...or worse, you have non-experts trusting their own knowledge over listening to expertise and coming up with inadequate solutions.
What this situation about the email scandal looks like to me is that Hillary Clinton becomes Secretary of State. She is undoubtedly briefed on the various levels of confidentiality required for specific documents and types of documents. She surely consults with the higher-up permanent employees of State about how to follow those guidelines. Apparently, the last few people in her position, Secretary of State, had a private email server set up and used in the way in which she used it...so, it seems to have been the standard operating procedure used by the past few Secretaries of State and was recommended to her about how to handle her email. She apparently sent her IT expert to consult about how to set it up, believing that this would then meet the qualifications about how to handle the security and her email. I'm sure that after it was set up (as had been done by the last few people in her position as part of their standard workflow) she thought that if she did what she had been told to do, she would be in compliance. She has to trust the experts who were in permanent positions and IT experts. Now, retrospectively, we think this is a security risk...and maybe it was. Maybe this was a terrible way for this to have been done all along and it never will be done this way again after this kind of scandal...but that is retrospective. Holding her responsible for something that was clearly normal procedure is problematic. And let me explain why this is so deeply unsettling...in addition to the fact that it just looks like one more time that the Inquisition is out for Hillary Clinton's blood...something I have been watching for almost all of my politically aware life.
I live in Washington, DC. I am not a professional government employee, but I am surrounded by them and I know something about how the federal government works. The vast majority of the work of government comes from civil servants. They often get a bad rap (they are portrayed as being lazy and overpaid). That is NOT what I observe. I observe a bunch of deeply dedicated professionals, the storehouse of expertise in our government. They are the ones who bring coherence to our government when the elected players switch over continuously. Yes, a government worker in DC may make a salary that would make people elsewhere in the country scream that they are being overpaid...my rent in DC for a one bedroom is $2100 a month and buying is completely outside of my capacity. I don't think our civil servants are overpaid.
Part of what our civil servants have to deal with every few years is a regime change. The upper leadership of everything is shifted out and reappointed...usually by people who have to learn the ropes while the business of government keeps on moving. The people at the top usually bring with them political ideologies and often change priorities in their institutions. So, part of what we need these new appointees to do is to have some trust of the civil servants beneath them and to listen to their expertise....because without it, you have a bunch of politically motivated folks playing for the cameras of the media and acting without the benefit of actually understanding what it is that they are doing...or serving special interests without knowing how it fits into the overall picture. Anyone who has been through a regime change in the civil service knows this.
What I want in a President is someone who will listen to, try to understand, and be guided by expertise. And we have a lot of expertise in our civil servants. I want someone whose opinions can be shifted when presented with good reasons - and there are a lot of instances of Hillary responding this way that are on record...I don't see that as "waffling," I see that as a virtue and indication of a reasonable mind. The way in which this email investigation is being conducted, from where I sit (trying to retrospectively hold her accountable for following what was the standard operating protocol for people in her position) undermines the ability of ANY President or political appointee to be able to trust expert opinion. Whoever wins this election, that is a dangerous precedent...we are about to have yet another regime change no matter who wins.
I believe that if this situation were being handled appropriately, I think that it should have caused a reevaluation of that procedure and a change in the procedure...because there are always things that we are currently doing that look like not as a good an idea in retrospect...that is growth. Instead, though, what we do is to blame individuals and hold them "accountable" rather than address things systematically. I don't see any good that comes from this way of dealing with things...and I see a lot of harm. One of the other things that I know (and I know people personally in this situation) is that this way of approaching problems does not create systematic change, it creates situations in which individuals get scapegoated and creates fear in which sometimes experts are afraid to speak up. I know people who have been scapegoated. I know dedicated civil servants who have had their careers destroyed in our desire to hold people "accountable" for doing what they were supposed to do when our beliefs about the rightness of those actions has changed. We need to have some way for re-evaluating our procedures that does not require us to throw people under the bus for doing their job.
I'm not talking about gross negligence of duty or recklessness that a reasonable person would recognize as such. I'm talking about things like...why would Hillary Clinton question the advice about data security on an email server that she got from the professional IT experts at State? That's not reasonable. So long as she actually did what she was advised, that is what a reasonable person in her position should do. We need our appointed officials to be able to trust the expertise of the civil servants in their employee. If that becomes impossible, we are in for an unbelievably huge mess.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Over-writing Roadside Accident Shrines
Pagans and Magick-workers - this post will be a call to action.
Yesterday, during a fabulous workshop on trance work with Ivo Dominguez, Jr., we got into a conversation about the problem of roadside accident shrines. This is something that I, too, perceive as a problem and have been working on when I see them.
Roadside accident shrines are a serious problem for the following reasons.
Yesterday, during a fabulous workshop on trance work with Ivo Dominguez, Jr., we got into a conversation about the problem of roadside accident shrines. This is something that I, too, perceive as a problem and have been working on when I see them.
Roadside accident shrines are a serious problem for the following reasons.
- They keep grief from healing. They are not really shrines for the dead, they are shrines that often function to keep grief and suffering alive. This is obviously a problem for the people left behind, but those problems bleed over into the spirit world and cause harm to the deceased who is constantly being pinged by loved ones who are in despair.
- Every time anyone drives by and sees it, they have this second of "oh how tragic!" When you have an emotion, there is always a little burst of energy associated with it. There are entities that feed on the energy that is released by various kinds of emotions. It's their food, if you want to think of it that way. Entities that feed on our so-called "negative" emotions tend to be unwholesome for the well-being of humans. Now, that doesn't mean you should freak out every time you feel sorrow, anger, or fear...but it does mean that if you either HABITUALLY experience these emotions or are in a place that is filled with people who within that context feel them regularly, it is likely to have drawn those beings. In Christianity, they often get the name of "demons," but I think that is giving them way more credit and power than is appropriate....in my experience, they are rarely actually intelligent. Typically they are better starved than fought. So, these roadside accident shrines can become places where unwholesome beings congregate.
- Because of both aspects of #2, roadside accident shrines tend to create more accidents. First of all, when you are driving and see one and have your moment of "oh how tragic!" you are distracted. Secondly, although I don't believe most of the types of beings that we are talking about in #2 are particularly intelligent, like all other beings, they like to increase their food supply..so they are distracting on that un/subconscious level to most people as well. Never underestimate how much of the work of consciousness is below the surface. So, roadside accident shrines are physically dangerous and spiritually dangerous.
Here is what I do. I try to overwrite them and I'm going to now encourage you all to participate. I try to turn them over to Hermes by turning them into a Herm. Now, Herms were all over the ancient world. They were little roadside shrines in honor of Hermes - traditionally a pillar with the head of Hermes and then a phallus on the front of the pillar. Here's a really traditional example.
Why a Herm?
- There is a ready-made appropriate traditional thought form already easily accessible in the astral for wholesome roadside shrines.
- Hermes protects travelers. Isn't that the way to transform that grief into something positive? May all travelers on this road be safe! Hermes is a powerfully wholesome influence.
- Hermes is also a psychopomp and, in my experience, is incredibly compassionate in that role. He can handle and carry over anything that is in those spaces that shouldn't be there.
Here, then is what I do...and I can do it quite quickly, although again, be careful because you don't want to be distracted to the point of adding to the problem by getting into an accident yourself.
1. I really quickly put the image of the Herm on top of whatever accident stuff is there.
2. I say "Hail Hermes, full of grace, I call to you to claim this place."
If it is a place I drive by regularly, I do it every time (at the moment, I am not living close to any).
That's it! If you should want to participate, I think this would be a good thing for any Pagan or magick-worker to do as service to the Greater Good.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Thoughts Inspired by Reading about Feraferia
This weekend I read the new book by Jo Carson, Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path. Reading it was a strange and magical experience and showed me some things about myself that I needed to see.
Although I had heard of Lady Svetlana, I didn’t know anything, really, about Feraferia – a path named “celebrate wildness.” This text is an interesting invitation into the spirit of Feraferia.
Here is my honest reaction. For the first forty or so pages, it vaguely annoyed me. It felt kind of like a childish hippie free-love fest…or at least, what I imagine a hippie free-love fest might have been like had I been alive to experience the counterculture. I was kind of intrigued that they were using a lot of Hellenic pieces but the tone wasn’t appealing to me. However, the art was starting to work on me.
This book is filled, FILLED with inspired, visionary art. I didn’t always “like” it (I often did), but it started to move me. And as I read on, what unfolded and affected me is that there is a reality embedded in this book that is a glimpse of one version of Paradise and that parts of it seep across the edges of the page and into this world. Through this beautiful, art-filled book written by people who are living this version of reality, I was touched with wonder. It was that kind of innocent, authentic response to beauty that doesn’t lay a bunch of interpretive content over it. It just experiences.
I experienced this soft and subtle wonder while looking at this art, reading this book, and mentally walking along beside the beings discussed and I felt my heart opening a bit more and I had a feeling of lightness. As someone who habitually runs on duty, this is the type of experience I need to cultivate more. I don’t know if I will necessarily take on any of the practices in the book (although if I had a yard, I would probably seriously consider a Faerie Circle henge), but it is an important wake-up call for me that I need to seek out more experiences that evoke that type of reaction…especially as I take on more and more and more duty.
It also made me realize that at this very moment, if someone asked me to describe my vision of Paradise, I’m not sure that I could articulate it anymore…and I think that is a problem. I don’t think my version would match the one articulated in this book, but as a magick-worker, I should be able to have a pretty good form of how my vision of Utopia would be constituted. It certainly is a worthwhile exercise. And one of the oldest methods of a certain type of spiritual development is to determinedly live as though one is in Paradise – which requires a clear vision of what you think Utopia is.
So, I am glad that I read this book. I had an interesting experience, learned about an area in my own life that needs more balance, and will look at the art again later. Many of the paintings really deserve to be the subject of meditation. However, I cannot be honest in talking about this book without pointing out a few things that were potentially problematic.
The founder and artist, Fred Adams, is a visionary who was inspired by research into ancient cultures and then bent history to serve contemporary ends. Now, I don’t actually have a problem with people doing that that so long as it is clear that is what they are doing and don’t portray what they are doing as accurate historical representation. The lines here are mushy and there are things in this book that are of questionable historical accuracy. I am particularly sensitized to the Hellenic elements. When one of your main sources of inspiration is Robert Graves, please recognize that Robert Graves himself is an “inspired” source. He work is notoriously historically inaccurate. Again…if it WORKS – if it gets you in touch with the Great Ones and your magic works, then that is fabulous and since we are practitioners, that is our ultimate goal.
The other thing that kind of bothered me and make it clear to me that this vision of utopia is not my vision of utopia is that it felt like the gender roles were really strong and, even though there is throughout a palpable celebration of the Divine Feminine, it felt like the female was always in relationship with the male. To be fair, the same thing could be said about the Divine Masculine. However, as a woman who is Parthenos, I have ALWAYS had difficulty relating to the Maid, Mother, and Crone archetypes because I can’t identify with any of them…they are all defined in relationship to their reproductive status and that doesn't resonate with me. In philosophical terms, it essentializes attributes that I consider to be accidental because I experience them as accidental. In fact, like Plato, I include human categories of gender as accidental rather than an essential attributes. I’m not really female and I’m not really whatever age I am at the moment…I’m just temporarily presenting myself as such. The sexual aspects of Paganism/Wicca/Witchcraft are poweful and positive for me me unless everything gets reduced to sex. Then it bothers me a lot because it is reductionism. I also find this reductionistic propensity to be really boring. This book doesn’t reduce everything to sex, but it is prominent and sometimes, for me, on the border of overpowering everything else. Others for whom this worldview is in stronger alignment may find fewer barriers to appreciation than I had.
All of this being said, Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path truly is a beautiful book and the art itself makes this a worthwhile purchase. There are also some lovely gems in terms of technique and visions, as well.
Although I had heard of Lady Svetlana, I didn’t know anything, really, about Feraferia – a path named “celebrate wildness.” This text is an interesting invitation into the spirit of Feraferia.
Here is my honest reaction. For the first forty or so pages, it vaguely annoyed me. It felt kind of like a childish hippie free-love fest…or at least, what I imagine a hippie free-love fest might have been like had I been alive to experience the counterculture. I was kind of intrigued that they were using a lot of Hellenic pieces but the tone wasn’t appealing to me. However, the art was starting to work on me.
This book is filled, FILLED with inspired, visionary art. I didn’t always “like” it (I often did), but it started to move me. And as I read on, what unfolded and affected me is that there is a reality embedded in this book that is a glimpse of one version of Paradise and that parts of it seep across the edges of the page and into this world. Through this beautiful, art-filled book written by people who are living this version of reality, I was touched with wonder. It was that kind of innocent, authentic response to beauty that doesn’t lay a bunch of interpretive content over it. It just experiences.
I experienced this soft and subtle wonder while looking at this art, reading this book, and mentally walking along beside the beings discussed and I felt my heart opening a bit more and I had a feeling of lightness. As someone who habitually runs on duty, this is the type of experience I need to cultivate more. I don’t know if I will necessarily take on any of the practices in the book (although if I had a yard, I would probably seriously consider a Faerie Circle henge), but it is an important wake-up call for me that I need to seek out more experiences that evoke that type of reaction…especially as I take on more and more and more duty.
It also made me realize that at this very moment, if someone asked me to describe my vision of Paradise, I’m not sure that I could articulate it anymore…and I think that is a problem. I don’t think my version would match the one articulated in this book, but as a magick-worker, I should be able to have a pretty good form of how my vision of Utopia would be constituted. It certainly is a worthwhile exercise. And one of the oldest methods of a certain type of spiritual development is to determinedly live as though one is in Paradise – which requires a clear vision of what you think Utopia is.
So, I am glad that I read this book. I had an interesting experience, learned about an area in my own life that needs more balance, and will look at the art again later. Many of the paintings really deserve to be the subject of meditation. However, I cannot be honest in talking about this book without pointing out a few things that were potentially problematic.
The founder and artist, Fred Adams, is a visionary who was inspired by research into ancient cultures and then bent history to serve contemporary ends. Now, I don’t actually have a problem with people doing that that so long as it is clear that is what they are doing and don’t portray what they are doing as accurate historical representation. The lines here are mushy and there are things in this book that are of questionable historical accuracy. I am particularly sensitized to the Hellenic elements. When one of your main sources of inspiration is Robert Graves, please recognize that Robert Graves himself is an “inspired” source. He work is notoriously historically inaccurate. Again…if it WORKS – if it gets you in touch with the Great Ones and your magic works, then that is fabulous and since we are practitioners, that is our ultimate goal.
The other thing that kind of bothered me and make it clear to me that this vision of utopia is not my vision of utopia is that it felt like the gender roles were really strong and, even though there is throughout a palpable celebration of the Divine Feminine, it felt like the female was always in relationship with the male. To be fair, the same thing could be said about the Divine Masculine. However, as a woman who is Parthenos, I have ALWAYS had difficulty relating to the Maid, Mother, and Crone archetypes because I can’t identify with any of them…they are all defined in relationship to their reproductive status and that doesn't resonate with me. In philosophical terms, it essentializes attributes that I consider to be accidental because I experience them as accidental. In fact, like Plato, I include human categories of gender as accidental rather than an essential attributes. I’m not really female and I’m not really whatever age I am at the moment…I’m just temporarily presenting myself as such. The sexual aspects of Paganism/Wicca/Witchcraft are poweful and positive for me me unless everything gets reduced to sex. Then it bothers me a lot because it is reductionism. I also find this reductionistic propensity to be really boring. This book doesn’t reduce everything to sex, but it is prominent and sometimes, for me, on the border of overpowering everything else. Others for whom this worldview is in stronger alignment may find fewer barriers to appreciation than I had.
All of this being said, Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path truly is a beautiful book and the art itself makes this a worthwhile purchase. There are also some lovely gems in terms of technique and visions, as well.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Saving Enough of Yourself for the Work
Time is the ultimate scarce and valued resource for mortal beings.
I think I should repeat that. TIME is the ultimate scarce and valued resource for mortal beings.
This leads to many challenges for those of us who have a vocation as a witch, as a worker of magic, as a priest/ess. What we know is that almost all of us have to work a full work week in order to pay our bills. And then there is all of that "business of life" to which we need to attend....laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and hopefully having some time for building and maintaining important relationships. This is enough to tax almost everyone in our society, but for those of us who have another vocation - a calling- the reason that we are in this time and in this place, for us, there is a whole other life to lead in the same 24 hours.
I know that I find this to be a significant challenge.
I think that one of the things that we all have to do - and I know I am working on it - is to both get very clear about what *exactly* is and is not our work. As Byron Ballard has said in numerous places, what are your two to three things that are your work? Your themes. Your focus. Not just for this year, but what are the themes for this incarnation?
Based on observations, it is my belief that our Work has two parts and that we need to be clear about and make time for both.
These two parts are the areas of your service and the areas of your growth.
1. What are those things that you have to give to the world that are your areas of Service? This is often your "Mission." Sometimes you may have great clarity about what that portfolio is, but it is often a long discovery process. At some point in time, you have to say "This is the scope of my Work." I know it sounds cheesy, but I would encourage people to write a mission statement/vision statement for themselves.
If you don't have any idea about where to look, I am going to repeat something that was once said to me by a couple of friends, Swamis Jyotir Vakyananda and Abhipadananda. "If you want to know what your dharma is, look at what your friends come to you for." I found this to be a deeply important and inspiring meditation that I conducted over the course of several months.
2. What are the lessons you need to learn or areas of growth you need to undertake? This may or may not be directly related to your Service. However, if you die without having grown, you have wasted an incarnation and none of us can afford that. This really requires undertaking a serious analysis that is compassionate (with yourself) and complete. I have found some very good insight can be gained by getting a good astrological reading here. My limited understanding is that both Saturn and the 12th house often reveal a lot about where you have "growth opportunities."
It is really important to balance these two and make sure that attention is given to both. Sometimes it is tempting to focus on the first, because that is usually where your excellence lies. That is usually where you shine. If you are like me, it is also where you perceive your "duty," and duty can be all-consuming
On the other hand, we are in a culture that really encourages us to be very focused on ourselves and our own "growth," often at the exclusion of paying attention to service. Within Contemporary Paganism, I think we often under-emphasize service and when people talk about their Work, they often exclusively mean their growth.
So, as I attempt to manage my time with the aim of ensuring that there is enough left of me to also undertake the Work, these are some of the methods that I am trying to use.
1. I am trying to be increasingly rigorous about not taking on commitments that are not directly related to either my Service or my Growth. There are many worthy things and worthwhile activities - that may be somebody else's work.
2. I am conducting an inventory of my time and effort and looking at what things get regularly neglected and what can I do about them. I can tell you thus far that what gets neglected for me are two things: My physical reality/health and my relationships....both of which are foundational to the success of everything else.
3. I am trying to outsource as much that is necessary work in terms of the business of life that I can to reduce ego depletion and recapture some time. This includes: I have decided to have someone clean my house once a month; I am now experimenting with Diet to Go, which is where I pick up pre-made low-carb meals - because I need to be on a strict diet, but I just realistically am not managing to do it. The barrier is time and energy. I could beat myself up about not staying on my diet - but a better solution would just be to have the food I'm supposed to eat handed to me. For that work that is necessary that I cannot outsource, I'm trying to find efficiencies for it and get it as routinized as possible. I already, for example, have a virtually brainless way of choosing my clothing. It's not quiet the Obama two suits, but it's not far off.
4. I am really trying to inventory my decision-making and eliminate unnecessary decisions and interruptions. For those who are not familiar with the concept of ego-depletion, get familiar with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion There is no point in raging against our natures. It is wise to just accept and work with them by making our lives human-friendly.
5. I am trying to get the specific work for my vocation both onto my calendar (I will do X and Y every new moon; magical and psychic purification work on the first of each month; and schedule specific workings in advance). I am trying to book myself into the times in which I will be writing, or studying or working on specific projects.
6. I am also trying to figure out how not to let my daily practice get out of control where it gets too long and then I end up breaking the pattern. Realism is good. It is better to meditate every single day for 10 minutes than to meditate every now and then for 30. I use timers.
7. I am trying, as much as possible, to schedule commitments and events where I am spending time with people I love doing things that feed my spirit. I need to get better about this, but I do have season theater tickets with some friends and have some things that I do with some people I love every single year...so those things get on the calendar. I need to try to create similar structures with some others who I love and don't see often enough. It just must get on the calendar and preferably in a regular rotation. Otherwise suddenly it has been over a year and I haven't seen or talked to some good friends because I've been done in.
Anyway, these are some initial thoughts. I would be really interested in hearing what other people are doing to manage these situations. The older I get, the more I am aware of the limitations of time.
I think I should repeat that. TIME is the ultimate scarce and valued resource for mortal beings.
This leads to many challenges for those of us who have a vocation as a witch, as a worker of magic, as a priest/ess. What we know is that almost all of us have to work a full work week in order to pay our bills. And then there is all of that "business of life" to which we need to attend....laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and hopefully having some time for building and maintaining important relationships. This is enough to tax almost everyone in our society, but for those of us who have another vocation - a calling- the reason that we are in this time and in this place, for us, there is a whole other life to lead in the same 24 hours.
I know that I find this to be a significant challenge.
I think that one of the things that we all have to do - and I know I am working on it - is to both get very clear about what *exactly* is and is not our work. As Byron Ballard has said in numerous places, what are your two to three things that are your work? Your themes. Your focus. Not just for this year, but what are the themes for this incarnation?
Based on observations, it is my belief that our Work has two parts and that we need to be clear about and make time for both.
These two parts are the areas of your service and the areas of your growth.
1. What are those things that you have to give to the world that are your areas of Service? This is often your "Mission." Sometimes you may have great clarity about what that portfolio is, but it is often a long discovery process. At some point in time, you have to say "This is the scope of my Work." I know it sounds cheesy, but I would encourage people to write a mission statement/vision statement for themselves.
If you don't have any idea about where to look, I am going to repeat something that was once said to me by a couple of friends, Swamis Jyotir Vakyananda and Abhipadananda. "If you want to know what your dharma is, look at what your friends come to you for." I found this to be a deeply important and inspiring meditation that I conducted over the course of several months.
2. What are the lessons you need to learn or areas of growth you need to undertake? This may or may not be directly related to your Service. However, if you die without having grown, you have wasted an incarnation and none of us can afford that. This really requires undertaking a serious analysis that is compassionate (with yourself) and complete. I have found some very good insight can be gained by getting a good astrological reading here. My limited understanding is that both Saturn and the 12th house often reveal a lot about where you have "growth opportunities."
It is really important to balance these two and make sure that attention is given to both. Sometimes it is tempting to focus on the first, because that is usually where your excellence lies. That is usually where you shine. If you are like me, it is also where you perceive your "duty," and duty can be all-consuming
On the other hand, we are in a culture that really encourages us to be very focused on ourselves and our own "growth," often at the exclusion of paying attention to service. Within Contemporary Paganism, I think we often under-emphasize service and when people talk about their Work, they often exclusively mean their growth.
So, as I attempt to manage my time with the aim of ensuring that there is enough left of me to also undertake the Work, these are some of the methods that I am trying to use.
1. I am trying to be increasingly rigorous about not taking on commitments that are not directly related to either my Service or my Growth. There are many worthy things and worthwhile activities - that may be somebody else's work.
2. I am conducting an inventory of my time and effort and looking at what things get regularly neglected and what can I do about them. I can tell you thus far that what gets neglected for me are two things: My physical reality/health and my relationships....both of which are foundational to the success of everything else.
3. I am trying to outsource as much that is necessary work in terms of the business of life that I can to reduce ego depletion and recapture some time. This includes: I have decided to have someone clean my house once a month; I am now experimenting with Diet to Go, which is where I pick up pre-made low-carb meals - because I need to be on a strict diet, but I just realistically am not managing to do it. The barrier is time and energy. I could beat myself up about not staying on my diet - but a better solution would just be to have the food I'm supposed to eat handed to me. For that work that is necessary that I cannot outsource, I'm trying to find efficiencies for it and get it as routinized as possible. I already, for example, have a virtually brainless way of choosing my clothing. It's not quiet the Obama two suits, but it's not far off.
4. I am really trying to inventory my decision-making and eliminate unnecessary decisions and interruptions. For those who are not familiar with the concept of ego-depletion, get familiar with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion There is no point in raging against our natures. It is wise to just accept and work with them by making our lives human-friendly.
5. I am trying to get the specific work for my vocation both onto my calendar (I will do X and Y every new moon; magical and psychic purification work on the first of each month; and schedule specific workings in advance). I am trying to book myself into the times in which I will be writing, or studying or working on specific projects.
6. I am also trying to figure out how not to let my daily practice get out of control where it gets too long and then I end up breaking the pattern. Realism is good. It is better to meditate every single day for 10 minutes than to meditate every now and then for 30. I use timers.
7. I am trying, as much as possible, to schedule commitments and events where I am spending time with people I love doing things that feed my spirit. I need to get better about this, but I do have season theater tickets with some friends and have some things that I do with some people I love every single year...so those things get on the calendar. I need to try to create similar structures with some others who I love and don't see often enough. It just must get on the calendar and preferably in a regular rotation. Otherwise suddenly it has been over a year and I haven't seen or talked to some good friends because I've been done in.
Anyway, these are some initial thoughts. I would be really interested in hearing what other people are doing to manage these situations. The older I get, the more I am aware of the limitations of time.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Pagan Cultural Appropriation: When It's Good, It's Very, Very Good, and When It's Bad It's Horrid
I think most people who know me have figured out that although my blood comes mostly from Northern Europe, my primary relationships with the Great Ones - those relationships that are so old and deep that they reach out to me and are, therefore, the reason I am Pagan, come out of my stream of past incarnations and are not from Northern Europe. I am primarily Hellenic. One of the awesome things about being primarily Hellenic is that I don't just have to rely upon my past-life recollections (although I regularly do). There are surviving written documents where I can verify what I remember. Part of what I remember is that we were regularly encountering other cultures and were constantly engaged in what now gets called "cultural appropriation," and I don't have a problem with how we were doing it. After all, Dionysos, for example, wasn't originally Hellenic, but he has long since become not only Hellenic, but one of the Olympians! Hail Dionysos! Our ancestors were always encountering other peoples and influencing and being influenced by them. This is part of being human.
There are two main approaches to encountering other people's religions that are really, truly, Pagan with roots all the way back and are documented. As far as I am concerned, when you use these approaches, you are being a good, truly old fashioned Pagan and I don't have any problem with them.
Model Number One: The AMAZING and Novel
You are traveling in a foreign land or encountering a culture that is different than yours. You discover something that is absolutely wonderful. Let's say they are amazing apricots...but it could be anything--a cure for some malady, a brilliant philosophy, a new musical instrument, an entire community that has developed a particular virtue to the peak of perfection, whatever.
Your reaction is, "These are the most AMAZING apricots EVER! How do you have such amazing apricots?"
To which you learn that in addition to whatever materially is going on (a particular hybrid, etc.) there is also a goddess of the orchards that blesses the apricots and teaches the people who listen to her how to best care for the orchards and manage the harvest etc.
At which point, determined that you, too, shall have amazing apricots when you go home, you learn everything you can, you consult about all aspects, and you take very seriously everything you have learned about this goddess. When you go home, you begin a cult to her and share what you have learned.
Information about how to establish, build and maintain appropriate relationships with the relevant invisible beings is an essential part of the transmission of knowledge. Not only do I not have a problem with this, I think this is a critically important aspect of what we have lost in our culture and is a huge factor in the many problems that we are facing in this world. No small part of what I see as the Pagan project is that we have to figure out how to re-establish, build and maintain these relationships with beings in relationship to virtually everything that we do...because that knowledge has been lost. If there are people who have this knowledge, especially about the spirits in our land-base, we NEED to learn it. And what we do learn, we need to be sure to pass on in addition to our knowledge about the material side of things. We need to re-weave these strands back together.
Model Number Two: I KNOW YOU!!!
From the perspective of a distant researcher trying to untangle history, this approach is a challenge...but it is a very legitimate old-school Pagan approach and one that we do naturally, I think. I will use myself as an example.
I am in a situation in which I am encountering a particular tribe's goddess who is the Bear Mother. When She appears, She looks really different, but I KNOW HER! It's Artemis, it's Artemis, it's Artemis!!! I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!! I know it's Her. I feel it in every cell. I know Her in that sense of when you have someone who is a dear friend that you haven't seen in decades and you know them instantly even though they look really different. Every bit of scholarly discernment has flown out the window because it's HER and I LOVE HER. And look how happy She is! I want Her to be happy. I didn't know She liked that kind of flowers. I will get Her some.
Again, this is truly, legitimately old-style Pagan and is all over the historical record. For that matter, we wouldn't even have a Roman pantheon if they hadn't done this with Hellas. The pre-Hellenic gods of that area were all aniconic. And when Alexander the Great sacrificed at the Temple of Herakles in Tyre, we can be pretty certain that this was not the name used by the Phoenicians, but that also doesn't mean he was wrong in his identification.
I believe that if we take the Great Ones seriously we are acknowledging that they are bigger than us and that our understanding of them is limited. Therefore, I think that the possibility that we are encountering some of the same beings wearing different "masks" is something to take seriously and can help us deepen our relationships with the Great Ones. However, it is important to realize that if you are recognizing a deity in a different culture as the same being that you know, you are speaking for yourself and do not take it upon yourself to speak for the culture of someone else.
Principles for Appropriate Cultural Appropriation
I don't see anything wrong with the two models of what I am now going to call "traditional cultural appropriation" because they imply the following:
1. They take the Great Ones and the invisible beings very seriously.
2. They are motivated by a desire to be in strong, appropriate relationships with these beings.
3. They take the wisdom and knowledge of the other culture very seriously and honor it.
4. They don't create harm to the other culture.
5. The person engaging in them is taking aspects into their own culture and is not setting themselves up as an "expert" in somebody else's culture.
This is very different than what I consider to be the "bad" ways of dealing with cultural appropriation. These are ways that violate #4 because they create harm to the other culture, but in ways that are typically subtle and invisible.
Model Number Three: The Baneful and Horrid
I am making an assumption that most people who are going to read this are magic-workers of some sort, so I'm not going to explain the guts of everything. This section is primarily about thought-forms.
Most cultures have various rituals that are primarily intended to maintain the health and well-being of the culture and its relationships with the unseen realms, including the most important Great Ones to those cultures and ancestral forces. In order to ascertain which ones we are talking about, you have to do a functional analysis of the ritual. Many rites of passage, for example, are not just about the individual's development, they are about the continuity of the people and the culture and their over-all right-relationship with the unseen. What you are looking for are those rituals that maintain a coherence for the culture on the inner planes.
As long-standing thought-forms, these rituals have a groove of power written into the inner planes. They are maintained through the repetition of the rites through the ages and from generation to generation. Most traditional cultures are under real threat. Often through a combination of genocide, forcible conversion to monotheism (if we are including other parts of the world, it is not just Christianity but also Islam), and dislocation, the thought-forms of the rituals that maintain the integrity of "the people" are not being sufficiently reinforced on the inner planes and are weakening.
DO NOT HIJACK THOSE THOUGHT-FORMS!!! It is baneful magic.
If you are dealing with an endangered culture whose elders are desperately trying to keep and maintain the thought-forms on the inner planes, redirecting what energy there is to flow to you and your community and/or rewriting the thought-form so that you've overpowered the traditional form...all of that is seriously baneful.
This requires some analysis on the part of magic-workers. You have to look at the functional purpose of particular rituals and you have to be rigorous and careful about how your rituals are related to the inner-plane thought forms.
Model Number Four: The Stupid and Tacky
Most of what I see is actually stupid and tacky rather than full-on baneful. However, there is some bane here and it bleeds into Modern Number Three, easily. If we step back and think about how thought-forms are re-written, I am going to say that when in early Christianity and during the persecutions of Pagans many of our gods became saints, this is an example of thought-forms being hijacked. They took our Great Ones, hijacked the thought-forms, and made them small.
So, when some white person decides to take the thought-form of a ceremonial headdress from an indigenous tribe and make it a costume or even an inspiration for an outfit to wear to a club, that person is taking a powerful sacred thought form and making it small. However, not everything that comes from another culture is sacred. We influence each other's styles all the time and I really like to wear clothes from other cultures. This takes discernment and learning enough about the other culture to make a determination about whether the aesthetic piece you are taking is rooted into sacred thought-forms. Take practicing members of the other culture as your guide in this. If they are wearing, using, doing the thing you are wanting to aesthetically adapt in mundane situations, that is an indicator.
Most of what I see in cultural appropriation, though, is just tacky behavior. Know something about the real-life situation of the people in the cultures you are encountering. I will give you a personal example that I have seen a lot. It has been a long time ago, but I used to go to Pow-Wows a fair amount. The way to respectfully go to a Pow-Wow as a white person is to make your own ribbon shirt and make it as pretty as you can make it by yourself and by hand. Put time and effort into it. What you DO NOT DO is to buy an expensive traditional tribal outfit that the people who are actually in that tribe cannot afford. That is unforgivably tacky. I'm sure you can expand from there.
Conclusion
These are just some thoughts because I don't think that our discourse at this point has been sufficiently nuanced. I don't believe in the binary that all cultural appropriation is bad. We are constantly influencing each other and all cultures are incessantly changing...if they don't change, they die. One of the biggest dangers to traditional cultures is the demand that they not be permitted to change or they are seen as not legitimate. That is one of the sure ways to utterly destroy traditional cultures...fossilized cultures are dead cultures. However, as Pagans, I do think that we need to be more thoughtful about how we go about adopting and adapting things from other cultures and being mindful that we do not engage in baneful activities.
There are two main approaches to encountering other people's religions that are really, truly, Pagan with roots all the way back and are documented. As far as I am concerned, when you use these approaches, you are being a good, truly old fashioned Pagan and I don't have any problem with them.
Model Number One: The AMAZING and Novel
You are traveling in a foreign land or encountering a culture that is different than yours. You discover something that is absolutely wonderful. Let's say they are amazing apricots...but it could be anything--a cure for some malady, a brilliant philosophy, a new musical instrument, an entire community that has developed a particular virtue to the peak of perfection, whatever.
Your reaction is, "These are the most AMAZING apricots EVER! How do you have such amazing apricots?"
To which you learn that in addition to whatever materially is going on (a particular hybrid, etc.) there is also a goddess of the orchards that blesses the apricots and teaches the people who listen to her how to best care for the orchards and manage the harvest etc.
At which point, determined that you, too, shall have amazing apricots when you go home, you learn everything you can, you consult about all aspects, and you take very seriously everything you have learned about this goddess. When you go home, you begin a cult to her and share what you have learned.
Information about how to establish, build and maintain appropriate relationships with the relevant invisible beings is an essential part of the transmission of knowledge. Not only do I not have a problem with this, I think this is a critically important aspect of what we have lost in our culture and is a huge factor in the many problems that we are facing in this world. No small part of what I see as the Pagan project is that we have to figure out how to re-establish, build and maintain these relationships with beings in relationship to virtually everything that we do...because that knowledge has been lost. If there are people who have this knowledge, especially about the spirits in our land-base, we NEED to learn it. And what we do learn, we need to be sure to pass on in addition to our knowledge about the material side of things. We need to re-weave these strands back together.
Model Number Two: I KNOW YOU!!!
From the perspective of a distant researcher trying to untangle history, this approach is a challenge...but it is a very legitimate old-school Pagan approach and one that we do naturally, I think. I will use myself as an example.
I am in a situation in which I am encountering a particular tribe's goddess who is the Bear Mother. When She appears, She looks really different, but I KNOW HER! It's Artemis, it's Artemis, it's Artemis!!! I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!! I know it's Her. I feel it in every cell. I know Her in that sense of when you have someone who is a dear friend that you haven't seen in decades and you know them instantly even though they look really different. Every bit of scholarly discernment has flown out the window because it's HER and I LOVE HER. And look how happy She is! I want Her to be happy. I didn't know She liked that kind of flowers. I will get Her some.
Again, this is truly, legitimately old-style Pagan and is all over the historical record. For that matter, we wouldn't even have a Roman pantheon if they hadn't done this with Hellas. The pre-Hellenic gods of that area were all aniconic. And when Alexander the Great sacrificed at the Temple of Herakles in Tyre, we can be pretty certain that this was not the name used by the Phoenicians, but that also doesn't mean he was wrong in his identification.
I believe that if we take the Great Ones seriously we are acknowledging that they are bigger than us and that our understanding of them is limited. Therefore, I think that the possibility that we are encountering some of the same beings wearing different "masks" is something to take seriously and can help us deepen our relationships with the Great Ones. However, it is important to realize that if you are recognizing a deity in a different culture as the same being that you know, you are speaking for yourself and do not take it upon yourself to speak for the culture of someone else.
Principles for Appropriate Cultural Appropriation
I don't see anything wrong with the two models of what I am now going to call "traditional cultural appropriation" because they imply the following:
1. They take the Great Ones and the invisible beings very seriously.
2. They are motivated by a desire to be in strong, appropriate relationships with these beings.
3. They take the wisdom and knowledge of the other culture very seriously and honor it.
4. They don't create harm to the other culture.
5. The person engaging in them is taking aspects into their own culture and is not setting themselves up as an "expert" in somebody else's culture.
This is very different than what I consider to be the "bad" ways of dealing with cultural appropriation. These are ways that violate #4 because they create harm to the other culture, but in ways that are typically subtle and invisible.
Model Number Three: The Baneful and Horrid
I am making an assumption that most people who are going to read this are magic-workers of some sort, so I'm not going to explain the guts of everything. This section is primarily about thought-forms.
Most cultures have various rituals that are primarily intended to maintain the health and well-being of the culture and its relationships with the unseen realms, including the most important Great Ones to those cultures and ancestral forces. In order to ascertain which ones we are talking about, you have to do a functional analysis of the ritual. Many rites of passage, for example, are not just about the individual's development, they are about the continuity of the people and the culture and their over-all right-relationship with the unseen. What you are looking for are those rituals that maintain a coherence for the culture on the inner planes.
As long-standing thought-forms, these rituals have a groove of power written into the inner planes. They are maintained through the repetition of the rites through the ages and from generation to generation. Most traditional cultures are under real threat. Often through a combination of genocide, forcible conversion to monotheism (if we are including other parts of the world, it is not just Christianity but also Islam), and dislocation, the thought-forms of the rituals that maintain the integrity of "the people" are not being sufficiently reinforced on the inner planes and are weakening.
DO NOT HIJACK THOSE THOUGHT-FORMS!!! It is baneful magic.
If you are dealing with an endangered culture whose elders are desperately trying to keep and maintain the thought-forms on the inner planes, redirecting what energy there is to flow to you and your community and/or rewriting the thought-form so that you've overpowered the traditional form...all of that is seriously baneful.
This requires some analysis on the part of magic-workers. You have to look at the functional purpose of particular rituals and you have to be rigorous and careful about how your rituals are related to the inner-plane thought forms.
Model Number Four: The Stupid and Tacky
Most of what I see is actually stupid and tacky rather than full-on baneful. However, there is some bane here and it bleeds into Modern Number Three, easily. If we step back and think about how thought-forms are re-written, I am going to say that when in early Christianity and during the persecutions of Pagans many of our gods became saints, this is an example of thought-forms being hijacked. They took our Great Ones, hijacked the thought-forms, and made them small.
So, when some white person decides to take the thought-form of a ceremonial headdress from an indigenous tribe and make it a costume or even an inspiration for an outfit to wear to a club, that person is taking a powerful sacred thought form and making it small. However, not everything that comes from another culture is sacred. We influence each other's styles all the time and I really like to wear clothes from other cultures. This takes discernment and learning enough about the other culture to make a determination about whether the aesthetic piece you are taking is rooted into sacred thought-forms. Take practicing members of the other culture as your guide in this. If they are wearing, using, doing the thing you are wanting to aesthetically adapt in mundane situations, that is an indicator.
Most of what I see in cultural appropriation, though, is just tacky behavior. Know something about the real-life situation of the people in the cultures you are encountering. I will give you a personal example that I have seen a lot. It has been a long time ago, but I used to go to Pow-Wows a fair amount. The way to respectfully go to a Pow-Wow as a white person is to make your own ribbon shirt and make it as pretty as you can make it by yourself and by hand. Put time and effort into it. What you DO NOT DO is to buy an expensive traditional tribal outfit that the people who are actually in that tribe cannot afford. That is unforgivably tacky. I'm sure you can expand from there.
Conclusion
These are just some thoughts because I don't think that our discourse at this point has been sufficiently nuanced. I don't believe in the binary that all cultural appropriation is bad. We are constantly influencing each other and all cultures are incessantly changing...if they don't change, they die. One of the biggest dangers to traditional cultures is the demand that they not be permitted to change or they are seen as not legitimate. That is one of the sure ways to utterly destroy traditional cultures...fossilized cultures are dead cultures. However, as Pagans, I do think that we need to be more thoughtful about how we go about adopting and adapting things from other cultures and being mindful that we do not engage in baneful activities.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Challenges in Intersectionality
For those who are not familiar with the terminology, intersectionality is when different forms of diversity intersect, often resulting in forms of oppression that build on each other and are greater than merely the addition of the oppression generated by the different categories. So, for example, an African-American lesbian has intersectionality with race, gender and sexual orientation that cannot be fully understood from just adding up the oppression for each category or addressing one at a time.
As a culture right now, we are struggling with trying to figure out how to deal with challenges that arise from having diversity and trying to also have some form of unity. Clearly the tremendous problem with state violence against minorities, in particular African-Americans, is especially pressing and has people on edge...where frankly we all should be, given the severity of this crisis. I would rather be deeply upset and struggling with white privilege than blind to these atrocities.
However, I don't think there are good roadmaps about how to really address these issues, so it is a struggle...one of the most important (along with things like how the hell to address climate change and wealth disparity) but it is difficult to know how to proceed, even if you do have a good heart. One of the problems that I have is that although I attend numerous diversity-oriented trainings in the hopes of getting some better tools to help me move forward as a conscious ally, I almost always find them singularly unhelpful. Usually the reason why is that they tend to do one of two things. First, the examples are so egregious...Donald Trump style comments...that it is highly unlikely anyone who is at the diversity training of their own free will is going to fall into that category. The other pitfall is that everything is *too* theoretical. I know the theory. I get the theory from reading. The question is how to use the theory in circumstances that are real.
So, I am going to offer a real experience in which intersectionality became real to me and I had a real understanding of some of my own challenges. As I have said on numerous occasions, part of the difficulty with life in general that tends to get highlighted in diversity issues is that we are all walking around "in media res." We are all in the middle of our biographies and react and see things through lenses that come from prior experiences...and those experience are generally invisible to everyone else.
About a year ago, so not long after the slaying of Michael Brown, my sister and I were riding with a friend through our neighborhood. There was a loud altercation on the sidewalk outside of the Safeway. At the center was an African-American woman and a Hispanic man who was holding onto her and she was struggling to get away. She was screaming "Get your hands off me, stop touching me, I don't want you to touch me" and similar. This was REALLY upsetting to me. I saw a police officer who was probably already headed there, but I told him that he needed to go break it up. Right after I did that, I looked over to my right and another African-American woman in the next car was looking at me with horror written all over her face. I was completely taken aback and then I realized that in her eyes I was the bad guy, because she thought I was sicking the cops on a black woman.
Now, it is not that I didn't realize that the woman was black. I am not "colorblind." Of course, I realized she was a black woman. It's just that at that moment, race had exactly no saliency in my mind. Coming from my own biography I was 100% reacting to the fact that there was a woman who was screaming that a man was touching her, that she didn't want him to touch her and that he wasn't stopping. I wanted someone to make him stop. That was literally all I could process in that moment.
So, then I said, "I hope she's okay," because I was still really worried about the woman. At which point my sister said, "what are you talking about?" And when I told her that that man was touching her when she didn't want to be touched, my sister pointed out that he was an employee, he had an apron on and that probably what had happened was she was stealing...all of which, I didn't even notice.
Who knows what was right to do in that circumstance, but it certainly indicated to me that in those kinds of situations, I quickly only focus on gender and that may be the wrong reaction. I can't say that in an adrenaline charged moment, I won't do the exact same thing again...but it was a really good example of three different immediate perceptions of the same incident.
As a culture right now, we are struggling with trying to figure out how to deal with challenges that arise from having diversity and trying to also have some form of unity. Clearly the tremendous problem with state violence against minorities, in particular African-Americans, is especially pressing and has people on edge...where frankly we all should be, given the severity of this crisis. I would rather be deeply upset and struggling with white privilege than blind to these atrocities.
However, I don't think there are good roadmaps about how to really address these issues, so it is a struggle...one of the most important (along with things like how the hell to address climate change and wealth disparity) but it is difficult to know how to proceed, even if you do have a good heart. One of the problems that I have is that although I attend numerous diversity-oriented trainings in the hopes of getting some better tools to help me move forward as a conscious ally, I almost always find them singularly unhelpful. Usually the reason why is that they tend to do one of two things. First, the examples are so egregious...Donald Trump style comments...that it is highly unlikely anyone who is at the diversity training of their own free will is going to fall into that category. The other pitfall is that everything is *too* theoretical. I know the theory. I get the theory from reading. The question is how to use the theory in circumstances that are real.
So, I am going to offer a real experience in which intersectionality became real to me and I had a real understanding of some of my own challenges. As I have said on numerous occasions, part of the difficulty with life in general that tends to get highlighted in diversity issues is that we are all walking around "in media res." We are all in the middle of our biographies and react and see things through lenses that come from prior experiences...and those experience are generally invisible to everyone else.
About a year ago, so not long after the slaying of Michael Brown, my sister and I were riding with a friend through our neighborhood. There was a loud altercation on the sidewalk outside of the Safeway. At the center was an African-American woman and a Hispanic man who was holding onto her and she was struggling to get away. She was screaming "Get your hands off me, stop touching me, I don't want you to touch me" and similar. This was REALLY upsetting to me. I saw a police officer who was probably already headed there, but I told him that he needed to go break it up. Right after I did that, I looked over to my right and another African-American woman in the next car was looking at me with horror written all over her face. I was completely taken aback and then I realized that in her eyes I was the bad guy, because she thought I was sicking the cops on a black woman.
Now, it is not that I didn't realize that the woman was black. I am not "colorblind." Of course, I realized she was a black woman. It's just that at that moment, race had exactly no saliency in my mind. Coming from my own biography I was 100% reacting to the fact that there was a woman who was screaming that a man was touching her, that she didn't want him to touch her and that he wasn't stopping. I wanted someone to make him stop. That was literally all I could process in that moment.
So, then I said, "I hope she's okay," because I was still really worried about the woman. At which point my sister said, "what are you talking about?" And when I told her that that man was touching her when she didn't want to be touched, my sister pointed out that he was an employee, he had an apron on and that probably what had happened was she was stealing...all of which, I didn't even notice.
Who knows what was right to do in that circumstance, but it certainly indicated to me that in those kinds of situations, I quickly only focus on gender and that may be the wrong reaction. I can't say that in an adrenaline charged moment, I won't do the exact same thing again...but it was a really good example of three different immediate perceptions of the same incident.
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