WORKSHOP/SALON 18: The Nurturing Response: irrepressible, unstoppable creativity!
Salon/Conversation with Charleen Touchette, Author and Artist May 15 - 29, 2007
May brings Mother's Day and my daughter's 17th birthday, and with it thoughts of our responsibility as mothers and to mothers and daughters worldwide who represent the hope that springs eternal in the human spirit.
April 2007 was the cruelest month again, with over 3,000 soldiers and over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians killed in the Iraq War and the death count rising daily, and 53 cents of our tax dollar going to the military and only 3 cents to our veteran soldiers. Women and children suffer worldwide from war, oppression and violence. Each day the call to peace is more urgent.
Mothers everywhere want peace and justice. We don't want anyone sending our young people to other countries to kill other young people in the name of protecting women and our children.
We are in a dark time of war and violence, when we are called upon to bring light and love into this world.
As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
As a woman and a mother, I see it is time for action.
We are not powerless. It doesn't start with them and it isn't their fault.
It starts with you and me.
"All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for." - Hopi Prophecy
We need to restore the power and respect for the matriarchy that served humankind for tens of thousands of years before the establishment of patriarchy just a few thousand years ago that has led our earth to the edge of destruction.
I am a mother of four young people ages 17 to 27 who are dealing with the mess our generation has made of the world. I don't have the luxury of blaming others, I must act to create a world where their creativity can flourish and they and their children beyond the seventh generation can breathe clean air, drink fresh water and live in peace with justice.
As a mother, I know first-hand that every action affects the earth and my children and grandchildren's future. As environmental Native activist Winona LaDuke wrote, "We are women who redefine 'Women's Issues', and say all issues are women's issues. I say We are mothers of our nations, and anything that concerns our nations is of concern to us as women. Those choices and necessities move us to speak out and to be active." (Winona LaDuke, "Introduction", GRASSROOTS by J. Baumgardner and A. Richards.)
The time is now. There is no path, no blueprint, no road map to peace.
The path is peace. Act peace, be peace, buy peace.
I respond by nurturing and supporting my irrepressible, unstoppable creativity. I make art night and day. Despite the obstacles, I find ways to show it, share it and give it away to people.
Art does matter. It can change lives and inspire the world.
The only things I can really control or change are my actions in each present moment. So, I meditate and focus on embodying mother love to help heal and nurture my family, friends and community and by extension, the people and the earth.
My grandmother Mimi embodied mother love. Her storytelling while combing her long black hair inspired my painting series, "Mimi Combing Her Hairs" (1983-1989) Mimi was the quintessential Indian grandmother with a wide lap and a warm ample bosom. She had the same beatific smile as the Mona Lisa, and the East Indian female avatars liek Amma and Karunamayi who travel throughout the world giving hugs. Despite adversity, Mimi loved unconditionally and laughed whole-heartedly. She embodied joi de vivre.
And she imparted it to others. Her laugh and happiness were infectious and healing.
Now that I am becoming an elder and officially a crone, I understand the source of my grandmother's joy. I can see why despite her hard life and the difficult times she witnessed, including two world wars, she was exuberant and loved life.
My art-making includes painting and image-making, but also spinning and knitting hand-made textiles to warm and embrace the wearer, growing healing herbs, building a healing bath house by hand, and getting our home "green" and energy-sufficient. It is all part of intensifying my connection to the earth and embodying creativity.
What are we doing or can we do, toward healing the earth?
- Artists' skills like Seeing with Clarity and Keen Observation can lead to Healing and Transformation. The natural result of seeing clearly is to use our voices to speak out and to use the gifts we each have to act.
- Action equals Revolution, meaning Change. Today, the world faces the need for a fundamental Paradigm Shift. How can we transform how we think about the Earth and our relationship to our home?
- How can we change the way we walk on earth so we can make less impact and create a smaller carbon load? The good news is as human beings we have a much longer history of living in harmony with Earth than the short period of patriarchy and insanity we're dealing with now.
People talk about "us" and "them". But it is us who are doing this to the earth and other human beings. Human beings are doing this. It is our habits and greed that have depleted the earth's resources, and caused catastrophic climate change, it is our money that pays for the destruction; and we can stop it.
Two things, we can vote with our voices, and with our actions.
We live on one earth; think about it, and act like it.
Everything is connected, and each time I turn on a light switch, if I ask where that energy comes from and did the way it was produced hurt or benefit life, I'll conserve energy. If I extend that question to everything I consume, it won't be possible to use plastic without knowing the consequence might be the murder or mutilation of a child in Iraq to protect my "right" as an American to petroleum products.
And I won't be able to forget that drilling for oil on that California high school campus gave American teenagers fatal cancers, or that emissions from plants making plastic kill inner city youth with asthma.
This thinking won't make me stop using plastic all together. After all, I'm a modern woman, a mother in the modern world who loves the conveniences just like everyone else. But I will choose healthy greener alternatives whenever possible.
It is time we look at the real cost of our American lifestyle - the cost to our environment, our children's future, and our souls.
Everything is connected. When war and genocide are perpetuated on the women of the Congo to make it safe for U.S. and British bankers to mine minerals to run video games, cell phones and computers, we as consumers become accomplices in the destruction of a people.
It is the same story of colonization from the beginning of time. Colonized populations "demand" consumer goods that depend on the destruction of indigenous peoples. The gold in the Black Hills in the 1880s, the California Gold Rush, cutting down the Brazilian rain forest, all are tied to the creation of consumer demand in westernized (colonized earlier) states. What if we see the connection and stop buying products and energy that destroy and pollute?
Artists are the Real Revolutionaries
Artists are the Real Revolutionaries because they are free. But so what? Artists can make art that looks good on the wall, or art that matters. If they make decorative art, they have a better chance of selling, if they make political art - not so much. If you make art to communicate, you face a dilemma. Do you self-censor to please the gatekeepers? Or do you create what you must and get the art to the people in other ways?
Living in Santa Fe has made me hate art, but I still love image-making. The longer I've been in New Mexico, the more dematerialized my art has become. I've gone from painting large scale huge thick collages on canvas to small oil sketches and photoshop prints of political images layered in micropixels.
"I suspect with your energy you will sit up at your own funeral (hopefully distantissimo) to explain three or four more projects you have in mind. Do you know the painting by whatshername, California Maidu artist [Judith Lowry] of Frida Kahlo? Like that." Tony award-winning playwright Bernard Pomerance (The Elephant Man)(11/12/2001 in an email to Charleen Touchette)
Artists are compelled to create, and I've always been a creative dynamo. Even in the depths of depression, I keep making things to keep going.
Creativity is not a choice. It chooses you.
Revolution meaning Re-Evolution --
My friend American Indian leader Russell Means says that revolution means going back - re evolving to indigenous ways. He points out that in the long time line of human history, the earth flourished for tens of thousands of years with indigenous, clan-based matriarchal cultures, but in a relatively short period of the patriarchy during the last few thousand years, the earth has been destroyed to a point of crisis. When we speak together about the Oppressionist Art Movement, Russell uses his long fingers to draw a circle in the air to illustrate the meaning of a revolution, a return to the beginning, a return to the matriarchy.
My Metis and Quebecois people taught us Survivance. I think of it as the Persistence of the Mother. I began my Repatriation to regain my indigenous beliefs and heritage in my 20s and chose a different path for my children. My memoir, It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl, is a Feminist Manifesto that advocates going back to the Matriarchy we had for tens of thousands of years before the Patriarchy began in the Middle East and the Greek City States just a few thousand years ago.
For artists, Seeing requires Action and Speaking Out
That is why I -
- Host Mixed Blood Radio - Voices on Indigenous Arts and Politics across the Americas with my producer and daughter Liesette Paisner. In the summer and fall of 2006, we traveled in Minnesota, South Dakota and California to gather taped interviews with Indian, Mixed Blood and Indigenous-minded leaders, artists, activists, authors and musicians. (Currently in production.)
- Mentor young artists with the TouchArt Youth Art Salon to encourage them to Embrace Diversity and to Live and Act Green.
- Founded TouchArt Books to empower diverse and progressive voices because the people who write Books Impact the World.
- Knit and design and spin wool for LDK - Liesette Doesn't Knit, where my daughter and I create handmade custom textiles to embrace and warm the wearer.
- Plant an orchard and organic garden at TouchArt Ltd and prepare to become a beekeeper.
The bees are disappearing.
Since last fall, 1/4 of the bee population in America, Europe, Brazil and other countries have disappeared due to hive collapse disorder, which some attribute to cell phones, genetically altered crops or the varoa mite. Einstein is often quoted as saying that if the bees disappeared, there would only be 5 more years left of human life on earth. Although it's disputed that Einstein actually said this, he should have. Bees pollinate many fruit and vegetable crops essential to the circle of life. Bees, like the miner's canary, can alert us to serious threats to our environment.
My new bee series honors and calls the bees home in a symbolic ceremony. In this art, I combine bee imagery, goddess paintings I've been working on since 1974, and my photographs of abundant rain clouds over the mountains in Santa Fe, a rainbow from my backyard in Navajo Nation, the forests of the Anishinabe waterlands in Northern Minnesota and ancestral Pueblo ruins from Canyon de Chelly. There is alchemy in these multilayered images which synthesize elements from the four directions, the elements, fire, water, air and different times between the present and ten, twenty and thirty years earlier.
Earth Changes today tell us we all need to be ndns again.
Everybody is indigenous to this planet earth.
We need to stop taking more than we need.
Adopt indigenous values of respect, sharing and family.
Us and Them is an Illusion - we are them and they are us.
We're all on the same planet. Divide and Conquer can stop.
It is not Hopeless - Every one can act and make a difference.
Each person can see how use of resources contributes to either destruction and violence or peace and justice. We can choose to reduce energy consumption one step at a time.
One Earth - Think about it and Act like it.
My next step is to go outside to turn the compost and plant the apple, plum, pear and cherry trees my children got me for Mother's Day. That is how I get through the day and act for the future. I can almost taste the first plum we'll eat next summer.
Ho Mitaku Oyasin...
(We are all related.)
Charleen Touchette
May, 2007
Author of It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl (Foreword Book of the Year 2004 Finalist Award) and ndn art (Fresco, 2003).
For more of Touchette's artwork, visit the blog entry previous to this one, posted earlier in May at COMING ATTRACTIONS.
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Images above, top to bottom clockwise:
"Calling the Bees with Petroglyphs" 2007
"Boys and Bees in the Forest" 2007
"She's Alive!" (part of 4-part oil painting suite "I Dreamed I Saved a Drowning Baby" 1995)
"Unity Plaza Mural Proposal 2007" (two photos)
All of Charleen Touchette's images of her artwork are copyrighted and may not be reproduced or circulated with her express permission.
Please visit the following of her web presences:
http://www.touchart.net
http://members.authorsguild.net/touchart/
http://oneearthblog.blogspot.com
PLEASE WELCOME CHARLEEN AND FEEL FREE TO ENTER INTO DIALOGUE HERE...
WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR OWN NURTURING RESPONSES!
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!
Presented by Michelle Miller Allen
www.greenphoenixproductions.com
(please copy all links to your browser, we can't trust where links take you from here!)
posted by Spiritbear @ 2:39 PM
41 comments
41 Comments:
Charleen, welcome to our salon!
I was so excited when I was downloading your bee series for this salon...then, synchronicity, later in the day I picked up a magazine that had arrived in our house, NewScientist, the March 2007 issue, and it had an article about the missing bees. I wondered if you knew about that and then received your narrative in which you discuss this. It is a sad thing about the bees. To quote from the article, "Imagine waking one morning to find 80% of the people in your community are just gone," sys May Berendaum of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign....and the article asks "It's an unsustainable system. The bees are really at the base of a lot of agriculture and if they go tumbling down, what's going to happen on top of that?"
Indeed!
I dunno folks...I am besieged with various bees here in Western Mass .
Looking at the insect included art made me feel sort of itchy !
So much info to digest and mull over.
I agree with nearly everything, but putting them all into my life is challenging.
A worthwhile goal to be sure.
Thanks for the welcome Michelle and your good work on this salon.
The bee crisis is disturbing, but can be a call to action.
I'm glad to hear you have big fat healthy bees there in Scotland.
Off to the World Peace Conference with my daughter and oldest son today and tomorrow here in Santa Fe where we'll hear Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu speak.
After that, I intend to contact the beekeeping teacher at Ecoversity to see about getting set up to keep two bee hives here at TouchArt Ltd. Am also continuing to plant the fruit trees for our orchard and an organic vegetable garden.
My dearest sister friend Winona LaDuke is coming to Santa Fe with her two sons tomorrow to speak on environmental and economic justice, so our whole family is looking forward to a warm visit and a good weekend.
Hope you have a happy and healthy weekend too.
CHARLEEN
Hi Charleen, thanks for your sharing of your art. I too make digital art and did a couple of pieces last week around bees. www.dragonflydream.com/beething.html
It is a very odd and scary thing to see just how much we, the peoples of this planet have harmed her....
Yes, Charleen, we have HUGE bees in our garden...I know because every now and then one gets inside the kitchen window and I have to wait it out til it leaves...I love seeing them up close like that, they are about as huge as a large beetle in New Mexico!
Hmmm, April, bees don't make me feel itchy...now midgies, that's another story! We have those over here in Scotland, wee little buggers that nip some but not all people...sort of like gnats but smaller and travel in strange wee clouds...
Yes, Charleen does raise many serious points. It is hard to know how to absorb all our responsibilities to the planet. I guess we each do as Charleen, map out our corner and do the do-able thing(s) we can do. In my "dotage" I am tackling litter. I live in a semi-rural area whose beauty is greatly marred by, mostly, the attitudes of drunken teens and the onslaught of fast food wrappers. This is what I am battling and it's more for the future than for the present, as it will take a few generations to "get it". And litter is the tip of the attitude iceberg, it's a place to start.
What are others doing to nurture the planet and fellow humans? We would love to hear that, here.
SB
On Mother's Day, i listened to a program on 'The Mother of Tibet', the Dali Lama's mother. In this program, the statement was made that today we are like a motherLess child (this song came on the RAdio in the RAven when i went to the store prior to tuning in to this program) because the Great Mother and the Divine Feminine have been sent into such a RAdical decline in today's world. That until She is restored into this world, there will bee no chance 4 Peace.
Hi all, I'm happy to have found this site thanks to the New Mexico culture net. And thanks to Charleen for her art. The first piece is pretty cool, it does speak to our earth conerns, so what's up with the bees??? Our poor planets, we have done so much to harm her. I too last week came up with some art around bees, check out my site at -
www.dragonflydream/beething.html
Peace,
Alice
"Sometimes I feel like an eagle in the wind, sometimes I feel like an eagle in the wind...a long way from home..."
Always have loved that song.
Greetings ShaRi and dragonflydream. Everyone, definitely check out the websites of ShaRi and dragonflydream, you will find out that - I suspect - the beeeeez are speaking to us all!
I love it when many minds link onto the same concept at the same time...and that some of those minds have come HERE to talk about it!
I just got back from attending a really warm reception for a local music presenter in Scotland at the BBC, where I met some lovely people. Heard the music in a small cozy room of Yvonne Lyon and bought her CD from her and we talked a bit about the cycles during a creative process...the excitement and then the stepping back and thinking what you have made is awful and then the coming forward again and feeling it is brilliant and back and forthing of all that...and the excitement of presenting your latest work for the first time to new eyes/ears...It was so refreshing to speak with a young woman with such a powerful voice.
I get such a "hit" talking with creative people!
They are MY buzzing bees of industry and excitement. Producing honey and cross pollinating the world to keep it moving.
SB
The words Charleen has spoken are awesome. The new rage is organic foods but you, they have been around for years. Just not accessible to the mass number of people, buying the convenience of food. For years, we grew a garden and not once did we use chemicals. It was all organic. We learned to live off the land but then, I've was taught young in my adulthood how to do that. I'm just a "healer" both professionally and non-professionally. I truly believe the majority of our health issues is related to "contamination of our food source". But then, we have become in "instant society" in all ways.
So much has been lost over the years as we have become more attuned to "modern ways". The last few times I gave spinning demonstrations in public, people would gather around and want to know what I was making. When I would show the process of making a skein of yarn, people would have that "deer in the highlights" look as if they no longer even knew what yarn was used for.
Yes, the bees are disappearing. I started noticing there was no longer the strong hum in the cherry trees as there use to be. At first, we thought it was because of the windy spring but as time went on, the trees began producing less & less cherries until one spring, we lost the tree entirely.
As an energy healer, I have participated in world wide healing of the earth over the past several years. But, so much more is needed.
Thanks Ladies for the feedback. Hope your connected to your creativity today and enjoying the day. We had the blessing of a drenching rain here in the mountains of Santa Fe earlier today and the air smells so fresh and new.
Sometimes things do seem overwhelming April, and it's a challenge to decide what to do first or if it's even worth it to try since it's hard to believe that our actions can really make a change. But it's amazing how little changes add up. I try one step at a time and often find when I look back that I've done more than I ever thought I could. If you're besieged with bees in Western Massachusetts maybe a local beekeeper in your area could come and take the swarm. Or local farmers may come for the bees since they'll need them to pollinate.
Everybody has their own path and often we stumble upon ours in the most unexpected ways. Spirit Bear's tackling of litter is admirable and a lesson in zen thinking. We don't have to think that our actions will solve the problem to know that we must act in little ways and hope for the best. Cleaning, like picking up litter can be endless, like Sisiphus' task, and frustrating. My husband and I have backpacked deep into the wilderness in the US and Canada, in National Forests and Preserves and on Indian Reservations and are always appalled to find litter of aluminum cans, plastic diapers, and plastic bags no matter how far we seem to be from so-called civilization.
Thanks Shari for the message from 'The Mother of Tibet', the Dali Lama's mother. We are like motherless children and worse, too many children in this world today are motherless. The Great Mother and the Divine Feminine have been oppressed, but she is irrespressible and inspires people worldwide to acknowledge that male and female, yin and yang are inseparable and equally essential and to honor the Great Mother and restore her to her proper place in relation to the Father God so the world can return to balance.
Thanks for sharing your art about bees Alice. Synchronicity is amplified these days. Bet lots of other artists are inspired to paint or make art about bees now. This new url address works to see Alice's Bee art at http://www.dragonflydream.com/beething.html
Alice's Bee art reminds me of my dear friend Sharol Graves who is Anishinabe, but lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sharol does digital art of beadwork and basket designs that have a similar high tech look and pastel pallette. She's another strong open hearted woman who has been working for peace and justice for decades.
I'm reminded lately of how lucky I am to know so many creative powerful women who work for peace and justice in their communities and the outer world, and have done this work for decades. Often these women warriors and peacemakers go unacknowledged and are not thanked enough, so I'm writing to thank my sister friends and tell them how beautiful,important and irrepressibly powerful they are and show my gratitude for what they do, who they are and how they inspire me and others.
Shalom, peace, paz, salaam, paix, skennon.
Peace ...comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship,
their oneness, with the Universe and all its powers, and when they realize
that...the center of the Universe...is really everywhere, it is within each
of us.
Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, 1947
The root of your life problems becomes nonexistent when you start to
cherish others.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Thank you Charleen for speaKing of a balance beetween the yin and the yang of it all, as it were. It is my beeLeaf that the direction that wee must move in is toward the balance of the Sacred Marriage, the Marriage of Gaia and the GreenMan. Toward the baLance of female and male, toward the baLance of the male within the female and the female within the male, "in this blending spiRAl stair".
Might i also include here the link to Inconstant Bard egg at Green Phoenic productions where if you click on Click HERE to listen to an excerpt from Rick Allen's Inconstant Bard CD, you will hear the song 'And Men Were True', the words 2 which i think you will find are most appropriate to this discussion.
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/bard.html
Blessed Bee! ShaRi
debbie, your story of the quieting cherry tree really struck me! What an image...
My generation was (and some remained so) very aware in re: organic foods, Gaia, the environment. Back in the 1970s many of us were trying to "get back to the land".
Maybe appropriate to the bees theme here, there is a commercial on TV that is for an automobile, it says that an engineer once said that the development of a great idea is like swimming in honey. Some days I feel that just living on the planet is swimming in honey. With the litter situation, as just one example, the sullen faces show the attitudes that are so fixed and hardened and, sadly, simply LEARNED...one day my husband asked (nicely) some young mothers with their children to please not leave their bottles broken on the sidewalk, to please put them in the bin that was about 10 yards way. They looked at him with dumstruck faces, not understanding what he meant. He just quietly said, then, "It's just that we are trying to keep the park nice for the wee ones, so they don't cut their feet when they are playing barefoot here." Suddenly he saw lights go on in their eyes, and they took their litter out of the park when they left.
But this is the level of...blankness we are up against...It seems such things needn't have to be said at all but...unfortunately they do need to be said and pointed out, day by day, person by person.
Charleen, I know what you mean about the litter way back in the wilderness. We see that in the Jemez Mountains all the time. I always thought that if someone appreciates nature enough to hike in that far, they would not be the kind to leave their litter.
I've found that I'm wrong.
And the leaving of broken glass...we have a friend who is a forest ranger law enforcement officer and he says forest fires ARE started by the sun hitting a shard of glass and starting a wee flame.
I love the sharing attitude at this salon this week. Sometimes people are hesitant to post a link to their own work or website...please NEVER feel that way at this salon. It isn't about our egos, it's about sharing our minds and hearts and hope. We need all the hope we can get, and when we see other people are out there creating and caring, that's one more dose of hope in our morning brew.
ShaRi, it's not surprising you posted what you did today about Rick's song and the male/female balance. I started to post something similar last night but was just too tired to organize my thoughts and decided to wait til today...but you have said it for me. All I wish to add is that today is the 10 year anniversary of my wedding to Rick Allen. Although he died in 2002 and I have remarried, today is still a momentous anniversary for me. Because, as it turned out, that wedding was truly more about the joining forces of male/female in a spiritual sense, in a sense of trying to do work in the world for that balance. I often fail in my personal life, but I keep getting back up and brushing off the dust and trying again. The inspiration from that man, Rick Allen, the way he loved the Feminine Principal, the Goddesses, Gaia, the way he embodied the duality of male/female in such a graceful way...remains my inspiration daily. So I am honored more than saddened at this 10-year anniversary. His poem/song, "And Men Were True" is, yes, ShaRi, completely relevant today.
I feel a wee bit sad today, about debbie's cherry tree...about the way someone, yesterday, screwed up their face in critical distaste at the idea that people are joining forces to clean up litter (don't ask me whence came such an attitude, it boggles my mind completely so I have to just shrug and let that one go)...about the shards of glass in the forest...about my own failings as a loving being...
But I do have hope. And you women and your words are a very huge part of that hope.
Have a beautiful day, let's.
SB
i have a bumper sticker that says 'Everything is Sacred'. Jason challengend this concept once, saying that he didn't think an aluminum can was Sacred. i said that it was because the material that it was made of came from the earth and if one treated it as a Sacred object, then one would take care to recycle it RAther than litter the roadsides with it. Does anyone remember the commercial of the tearful Native American saddened by our treatment of the planet? Everything is inDeed Sacred, and all of our Deeds must come 2 bee based on this principle.
You reminded me, ShaRi, of "anima mundi", a concept I read about a lot in Jung. I did a quick Google and found this, which is what you said and what it made me remember:
"Hillman’s essay on nature is especially interesting in this regard. If we take nature literally and romanticize its beauty and harmony then we stand a chance of losing touch with the "natural beauty" of culture. Of the things we make. For his notion of soul, Hillman relies on alchemists who describe soul as an opus 'a work'. He also keeps in mind the quotation from John Keats that describes the world as the 'vale of soul-making'. Hillman uses this as a motto for archetypal psychology. Culture can be defined as the work of soul-making.
"To his theory of anima mundi Hillman adds many essays on the soul of ordinary things, from city streets to the ceiling in a room, thereby restoring a sensibility for the affections and sensitivities of things. If the world has soul, then each thing in its own way will manifest consciousness and affect. If it is difficult to imagine this soul, then perhaps that difficulty only demonstrates how much subjectivity we humans have usurped. Yet it is abundantly clear how much soul we can find on an ocean beach, in a cabinetmaker’s shop, or on neighbourhood street. Returning soul to the world not only attends to the world, it offers more opportunity to engage in the work of soul ourselves."
(From " The Essential James Hillman" ed.Thomas Moore 1989 Routledge)
(I hear Brad's wheels turning, although he is traveling a lot lately, it might be a while before he lends to this discussion).
SB
Oh my goodness, I can't believe I didn't type the link to m y own site correctly, how embarrassing. I am humbled by the words of the women here, my gift is not that. SOmetimes I wonder as to what my gift really is.... I'm hoping it is my art. I am saddened at the loss of the cherry tree, but every day I am more saddened at the loss of our pinion trees. A few years back we herein Santa Fe wee hit with some sort of bark beetle that literaly wiped out thousands of our trees. It is sad to see so many, many skeletons lining our hills. I had to cut down close to a hundred trees.... What are we to do? We each can do our small part to try and save our world, picking up trash, cutting down on our consumtions, recycling where we can.
Charleen, I think I met you years ago at a mall where you had your table set up with your new book. You are a brave woman for telling your story. At that time I was running a non profit for breast cancer, Dragonfly's Delights. It is a very scary thing that so many woman and men are stricken with cancer.....
Perhaps today I will do some more art, let's all try and heal ourselves, our planet, our lives....
~Dragonfly Dream
Honoring and healing the balance of the "Sacred Marriage, the Marriage of Gaia and the GreenMan" as Shari wrote, is important work right now. The honoring of the feminine to balance the outer world is also needed within us. Part of our life's journey is to balance the female and male within ourselves and the male within the female and the female within the male.
In 1983 when I painted the first vision of the antlered Spirit Woman, an Aztec/Huichol medicine man said the woman was a "Woman of Peace" who brought a message that I was to work for peace and healing the earth through my art and work with other artists. I wrote in my memoir and in my chapter in FEMINIST ART CRITICISM about how painting that vision led people from many cultures to share their stories about the antlered woman. At first, I was baffled by the antlers on the woman, since only male ruminants usually have antlers. Some suggested the Spirit Woman was a woman who has balanced female and male energies within herself and others that the antlered woman was a woman in touch with the ancestors and through whom the ancestors spoke. In 1984, when we moved to Chinle, I immediately connected with the drawings of the antlered spirit people in the petroglyphs in Canyon de Chelly and looked again at the rock art of the southwest and across the Americas. Later, Gloria Orenstein wrote about my art in RECLAIMING THE GODDESS and connected the image to the Reindeer Woman of the Sami people of the Arctic and pointed out that reindeer are the only female ruminants who have antlers. Linda S. Leonard wrote about my Deer Woman images in FOLLOWING THE REINDEER WOMAN and asked me to create a new Reindeer Mother Vision for the cover of the book's 2005 reissue.
The antlered woman is an archetype and in the 24 years since she showed herself to me, I've noticed her emerge in the art of many people throughout the world both men and women. I've been thinking she must have a male equivalent. When we did the Unity Mural (named by 17 year old Liesette Paisner), I created the image of "MaleSpirit" as a companion to the "Womanspirit" I'd begun painting in 1974 (See photos above.) I thought of the men in my family and life, and especially my three grown sons. My friend healer, dowser, homeopath,and chiropractor extraordinaire Vito Hemphill is also writing and teaching on the Sacred Marriage. Check out his webpage at www.vitohemphill.com Vito is one of the good guys.
The healing of the relationship between male and female, husband and wife, and also father and daughter, mother and son is crucial to healing our earth. And central to that healing is forgiveness, admitting we make mistakes and saying sorry.
Thursday, Rigoberta Menchu Tum spoke about the importance of gratitude, but also of asking pardon each day.
Daily practice of gratitude and asking forgiveness brings humility and awe that can connect us to the core of inner peace and joy that is ever-present deep within each of us.
Too often we forget to say thanks for all the inspirational work people do. My husband Barry and I've been blessed with many good friends who've been working for peace and justice for decades and I've begun contacting them to say thanks.
When my teenage daughter Liesette and I went briefly to the World Peace Conference on Thursday morning, I was struck by how harsh people are with each other when a kind word, a smile, or a simple act of kindness could smooth paths so easily.
I've been thinking about the difference the practice of unconditional love could make in the world.
So I'm resolved to feel and share unconditional love and thank people who do the same to increase the light in this dark time.
Thanks for all you do each day and for your years of hard work and heart that brought you to this moment.
Hi Dragonfly, Thank you for your kind comments on my book and your good work for people with cancer. I do remember meeting you at the women’s health conference organized by another great woman in our community Dr. Justina Trott and the people at the NM Women’s Health Center. They and you are some of the powerful women lightworkers whose actions and words help heal. Thank you, or as we French Canadians say, Milles Mercis.
Michelle’s moving story about her husband shows how powerful an example someone can be when they are openhearted and grieve fully. Thank you for sharing the understanding you gained through your pain.
The sadness Michelle expressed so eloquently is prevalent throughout the world today. It is strong and nearly overpowering these days for very good reasons. Sometimes it is almost impossible to breathe when I think about the children who are orphaned by AIDS, the Mohawk mothers whose breast milk is contaminated with PCBs, the 200-800% increase in autism in children and the death and mutilation of soldiers and civilians in the Iraq Occupation.
The most recent honor killing of a 16 year old girl in the Middle East, the ever increasing violence against women, and the suicides and violence that top New Mexico’s local news are all so sad. Our anquish is compounded by the helplessness we feel in the face of such inexplicable hatred and violence. We can’t stop it overnight, but we can grieve together. The grieving is part of the cleansing that we and the earth are undergoing now. We also each have our own personal sadness and regrets that sometime threaten to swallow us up and the grief can feel too painful to endure.
But maybe the pain of seeing this violence and oppression of women and children will inspire action for change.
Unfortunately, Pope Benedict refuses to see the chaos, suffering and war plaguing the world as proof that the current belief system breeds violence and needs to be replaced.
Pearl Means just sent this news of Pope Benedict’s insulting message to the Brazilian Indians -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051400721_pf.html
By Raymond Colitt
Reuters
Monday, May 14, 2007; 3:15 PM
BRASILIA - Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step. (emphasis added)
“"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab.
The pope’s arrogant comments have been a hot discussion topic on my Franco-American and Metis. The French Jesuit missionaries brought disease and destruction with their religion that killed families and destroyed many communities in the Northeast. Still many French Canadians, Metis (Mixed Bloods) and Canadian Indians are devout Catholics and loyal to the Pope. Religion continues to be used as a tool to divide and conquer.
As Pearl Means wrote, “It doesn't stop.”
It is the same sick story. But it can change. I have to be hopeful. I have 4 children.
Religions and political systems that depend on the subjugation and oppression of women and the destruction of the earth are bankrupt.
We pray this is the last gasp of destructive patriarchy.
We will continue to work to feed our children and care for the earth, as Winona Laduke says, “from our sticky kitchen tables.”
On a hopeful note, listen to Severn Suzuki, a pre-teen from Canada who addressed the UN Council for Environment and Development in Brazil at
Click here: YouTube - Vídeo 1 - ECO_92 -
This articulate girl says it all with the clarity and force of a wise woman.
The earth and its beings are alive and sacred. As Severn Suzuki says, “We are a family 300,000 million species strong.” We have to start taking care of each other.
Another positive note inspired by Sara’s insight about aluminum cans. When Janeen and her mom Muriel Antoine (two powerful Lakotah women who work for the community) visited last spring, they gave us a beautiful Aztec inspired piece of art pressed into aluminum soda cans. The Mexican artist Ely Canul he cuts and flattens the cans into rectangles and presses a bas relief into the aluminum then paints it to look like burnished copper. Ely Canul (Ecological Pictures Av. M. Hidalgo 335 Lote 38, S.M. 73 M4 Tel. (98) 88-35-54 Cancun, Q. Roo Mexico.
Great recycling idea and a source for free art material.
You can hear Janeen Antoine’s radio show Native Bay Circle on KPFA in San Francisco at http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=88 Janeen’s co-host 26 year old Ras K’Dee interviewed me and our third son Raoul while we were in San Francisco on the Mixed Blood Radio tour. It’s about 12 minutes into this broadcast from September 20, 2007 http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=16241
Have a great day. Time to plant more trees and vegetables.
Winona LaDuke and John Trudell speak tonight at the IAIA Museum at 7 pm.
From One Spirit Doth RAdiant Petals Emanate Profunda Paz=ProfoundPeaceSUNflower=The religions of this world MUST come to realize that they are all the same at the center, and that "the center of all things" has allowed each individual petal to come into existence to meet our need for individuation into that center. Thou shalt not kill, nor condemn others for not following your individuated choice BEEcause each individuated path ultiMATEly leads to the same center of Love Unconditional.
from my ProfundaPazRAflower post on Thursday, March 01, 2007
http://zmyztickleonion.blogspot.com/2007/03/profundapazraflower.html
Been doing some catching up on reading here. Just a few comments to share.
First, back in the days of raising boys, I was very active with the Boy Scouts. One of the things that is stressed to the boys at all ages is leaving footprints when you leave. I always knew back then, we were leaving the environment much cleaner than when we arrived, just by the amount of trash the boys would collect. Unfortunately, the number of families participating in youth programs dwindle daily therefore the number of children growing up in the environmental friendly programs are also dwindling.
I also want to comment on Shari's comment about religions today. I concluded in my own spiritual truths several years ago, that all religions are talking about the same infinite spirit. You are so right when you quoted the following from Emanate Profunda. "The religions of this world MUST come to realize that they are all the same at the center, and that "the center of all things" has allowed each individual petal to come into existence to meet our need for individuation into that center. Thou shalt not kill, nor condemn others for not following your individuated choice BEEcause each individuated path ultiMATEly leads to the same center of Love Unconditional." I have read several times this weekend, basically the same thing from other sites. More and more people are just beginning to wake up spiritually.
By the way, for the first time in the 2 1/2 years I have lived in NC, I saw a honey bee this morning, checking out my patio.
Hello salon folks!
I've been busy readying for our big trip back to the USA, stopping in to read what's going on here a few times a day...
I was musing about Charleen's description about the process of her new bee series, as she said, that it "...honors and calls the bees home in a symbolic ceremony. In this art, I combine bee imagery, goddess paintings I've been working on since 1974, and my photographs of abundant rain clouds over the mountains in Santa Fe, a rainbow from my backyard in Navajo Nation, the forests of the Anishinabe waterlands in Northern Minnesota and ancestral Pueblo ruins from Canyon de Chelly. There is alchemy in these multilayered images which synthesize elements from the four directions, the elements, fire, water, air and different times between the present and ten, twenty and thirty years earlier."
Charleen, I was wondering, also, when you said that we don't choose creativity, it chooses us...how consciously did you decide to do this series, or did it sort of fall together subliminally? Whatever, I really love it. I like the idea of making art to call in a specific spirit or element or energy. I'm trying to do that in the novel I'm writing now, although disguised as women's adventure/romance fiction, my intention in it is quite spiritual, my way of voicing some of what we are saying here, and counteracting the violence that occurs in the name of belief systems and gods.
I hope our participants remember to view not only the art at this salon but the other of Charleen's works which I had put up as the Coming Attractions (see the blog entry immediately prior to this one). I love seeing the progression of the work, from the darker ones into the healing series and now the bees...
debbie, what you said about only leaving footprints, I have been using a quote from John Muir in our litter campaigns here, which reminds me of what you said...
"How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track."
Well, back to lists and packing. Tonight I get to go to my first community meeting about the litter thing...where neighbourhoods are starting to reach out to each other to make the effort more...MORE! I'm finding this litter thing is a great way to meet the kind of people I can relate to. Caring, concerned people who don't mind getting their hands dirty! And have a sense of humor, too!
SB
Charleen made a comment about hating art here in Santa Fe. I kinda know what she means. I have to admit I am an art snob and much of what I see here in Santa Fe makes me just want to cry out loud "why is this in a gallery???" And yet I am not so brave as to try and get my stuff in a gallery. But yesterday I found a new gallery and was again astonished at what I would call bad art displayed. But there was one fellows work that I dug. I just might be brave and see if they would be interested in seeing my art.
So Charleen, what am I seeing in your blue orbs, in your third example of work? Intriging.
Hello Salon Visitors,
We are leaving soon for our trip, so I am taking off the moderator editing mode so that you can post freely the rest of the week while I'm traveling and then recovering from jet lag. I expect to check back on May 31st and then will announce some upcoming hosts and hostesses for the later summer/fall...then we will go into summer mode, i.e. no active salons til August.
Charleen says she will be checking in soon, she's been planting a garden I believe!
Do what you love and love what you do!
SpiritBear
Good Morning everyone. It is a glorious day here in the mountains of New Mexico. The sky is clear blue like in the Willco song "Sky Blue Sky" after several beautiful days with dark abundant rainclouds and female drenching rains that have left the mountains singing with new green sprouts.
Weather has been great for planting, so I've been out digging, weeding, pruning and moving rock and earth. Working outdoors in the spring always helps get my energy flowing and heals whatever blocks have happened over the winter. Planting an orchard in this rocky terrain is hard but gratifying work. As I build rock walls and paths with the stone we dig from the earth, I remember my grandfather Pepere who built the stone barbecue and how I watched him place stones for the flagstone patio at the lake when I was a little girl. My grandfather taught me the joy of working. Pepere Touchette was a plumber, formerly a millworker from a mill working family in North Grosvendale Connecticut, and he showed me the dignity and humility of the working man. Over the weekend, Barry and I dug the garden beds for the corn, beans and squash and I'm planting the three sisters today in the traditional southwest way. Since I started the planting, I've seen two bees, and my daughter's friend has a hive I may be able to get to bring here. The humingbirds have returned and are zooming in like tiny helicopters to the feeders. The next three days, I'll be traveling to communities and pueblos in New Mexico, but will check in when we have internet access. Now, we're off for the morning hike up and down the mountain with Barry and our daughter. Will write later in response to the very interesting questions from Michelle Miller Allen and DragonFlyDream, and fill you in on the newest knitting and art projects. In the meantime, hope your creativity flows and you walk with beauty all around you, and that you and your family circles are happy and healthy.
hello charleen i liked your bee paintings very much. funnily enough i have been making bee houses for my little gardens after reading that they need a little help. one seems to have been moved into already (im very chuffed) and spend a few minutes watching them come and go. my littler buzzers are already feeling like family and i feel responsible for their welfare. one of my little buzzers followed me into the kitchen yesterday and had a good look round I wondered if he may have been checking me out as a suitable bee guardian. I have a garden full of wild flowers and lavender and the bees love it. i love my chaotic colourful minature world. the birds seem to love it too. sometimes the air is full of bird chat. I have been in a bit of a slump but reading your passionate and energising words has given me a little push, a nudge in the right direction. many thanks. kate
Hello Kate! I'm so happy that the words here have inspired you. How does one make a bee house?
Charleen, your words from New Mexico have inspired a UK woman!
I am doubly blessed. I have housesitters now in both countries, both of whom are busy gardeners! I came to the USA to find my housesitter Halli has planted more gardens with herbs for me to cook with and a blessed wooden carved spirit to guard them...while back in Scotland housesitter Hana from Poland is busy building rock gardens and planting herbs...I hope to learn from them both.
It is very beautiful here in New Mexico and much is being accomplished, including nice long visits with old friends.
A good world. The hummingbirds are coming around here.
SpiritBear
Hi Spirit Bear, there are quite a few different bee houses for differing bees. I downloaded the instructions off the net after reading up on Mason Bees on the net. Mine are pretty basic. sticking bamboo sticks together to form a honey comb like structure. they like to hibernate in them aswell which i found a brilliant idea. so nice to think that i can take my little buzzers into the warmth in the cold weather to let them sleep in comfort(you just pop the houses into a shed or garage etc in the winter)lovely!!! ill be making curtains for them next!!!!ive also had a go at drilling holes in a few logs which you then hang up 4 ft off the ground facing south. the garden is full of bes now which is great.ive made a ladybird house for my little cottage garden out front. same principle(a log drilled with lots of holes) but placed near the ground in amongst leafy cover.How great to see a Humming bird. I have alwlays thought how lovely they appear, magical. hope you enjoy your time in New Mexico. best wishes kate
"We are ONE with the Great Goddess, the sacred Earth, and we are one with the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. We sense, we feel, that somehow in some way, we are all together singing into being the song of the soul." Judi Singleton
PLEASE check out the gorgeous image that goes with this!
http://goddessgospel.blogspot.com/2006/04/earth-mother.html
Hmmm, the computer ate my post!
ANyway, I dreamed last night I had a wee mud hut style bee house in my hands and was deciding where to place it. I guess, Kate, my brain was still mulling over how one makes a bee house, when I went to sleep!
Wee curtains, hah!
THanks for the link, ShaRi, beautiful!
Back to brochure-making over here!
Yes, the hummmmmmmingbirds are magical. I have seen a thousand humming birds once, all sleeping.
SpiritBear
Beautiful Kuan Yin image. Thanks Shari for sharing and thanks to Kate for telling about the bee houses. How lovely.
I tried to write yesterday but the computer ate my message too SpiritBear. I'll post this right away and learn my lesson and write more on a word document first. Hope you are all having a great night. Charleen
Hi Shari beautiful words! i really wanted to see the goddess image but just couldnt get it. I am not a natural blogger or computer buff I usually just work things out as i go along. but for some reason just couldnt get the image. I am sure it is beautiful. The beauty in the natural world is a bridge to the beauty of the soul and the spiritual world.to see takes more than just a look. How wonderful SB to see 1000 humming birds asleep. a collective breath. how lucky.!!Charleen thanks for your words once again, they flag up spaces in my heart. kate
Kate, did you copy or type the link onto your browser?
Hi Everybody,
We're lucky to have abundant rain clouds today here in Northern New Mexico and it’s raining softly now. The eight new fruit trees in the orchard look like they will survive transplanting even though we were away three days last week up north. My daughter Liesette Paisner were up at Ohkay Owinghe (San Juan) and Santa Clara Pueblos and then took the high road to Truchas, then drove back down to Cordova and Chimayo with some of the Land Grant Heirs under the Treaty of Guadalupe de Hildalgo. It is beautiful up there. I thought of all of you when we visited 73-year old sustainable farmer Emilio Ortiz and watched him irrigate his corn and wheat fields with the water from the acequias. The bees were buzzing happily in the ancient orchard where the apple trees had enormous trunks and secondary limbs bigger than my torso where you could spread out and read a book and the grape vines were just unfurling with tender spring green leaves.
The earth is so magical. She continually renews and refreshes. I was inspired to see how Emilio cared for the land and the way it is flourishing under his stewardship. His daughter Linda Chaves told us her father used wood to heat his adobe home and to cook. He lives through the winter on the harvest from his garden and canning from the orchard. She said that if there were another Depression, the people of Northern New Mexico would probably survive because they know how to live on the land.
How different our earth would look if more people took stewardship of a bit of land or even reintroduced the earth into the city by planting roof and city gardens like Diana Dorn-Jones and the people who grow the Community Gardens in Albuquerque. I’ve noticed that anytime I plant and tend a bit of earth, the entire ecosystem in the immediate area changes and new plant, insect and animal live thrives. Even people are affected positively by thriving growing plants.
At seventeen I remember being struck by the difference between the bleak grey tenements of the South Bronx and the working class brick neighborhoods of London where tiny front yards dedicated to kitchen gardens overflow with greens and flower boxes brighten windows and I suspect, at times, spirits.
Planting Victory Gardens, Kitchen Gardens or what the French call “Potager” - from tiny to replacing grass lawns and irrigating with water captured from roofs and paved areas and grey water or constructed wetlands could transform our world. Why depend upon food trucked in using non-renewable oil, packaged in petroleum based plastics, when we can grow and trade for much of our fresh vegetables and fruits? Anyone can plant a garden, almost anywhere on this verdant earth, even in cities, Our son Sage lives in the middle of the city of Albuquerque near the University of New Mexico, but he has a big vegetable garden, and he and four neighbors formed an informal coop where they trade and share seeds, starter plants, and harvest. It’s like the communal sharing of harvest of the Northern NM Land Grant Heirs who are descended from Pueblo Indian, Spanish, Jewish as well as my Acadian ancestors who married the Mi’kmaq and lived a communal agrarian life until their expulsion from Nova Scotia in 1755.
Instead of outsourcing our food production, let’s grow and eat local.
Check out http://www.kitchengardeners.org/2005/10/what_is_a_kitch_1.html
The Kuan Yin image Shari sent is beautiful. It’s like the Kuan Yin wood carving I found at the Santa Fe Flea Market when we first moved here in 1998. The statue is nearly three feet tall and stained with pale pastel colors the same hues as the painting by Judi Singleton. It has sat by our living room fireplace since we built our home. I’ll try to take a photo and post it at http://www.myspace.com/touchartbooks in a day or so. I posted some news pics there yesterday, so if you want to see a bigger version of the Bee art, please check it out.
Kuan Yin embodies compassionate unconditional mother love. In her hands, she holds a turnip symbolizing feeding the people from the earth.
To finally answer SpiritBear’s question last week “how consciously did you decide to do this series (“Calling the Bees”), or did it sort of fall together subliminally?”
Yes, Michelle, the Bee art did come together both subliminally and magically out of the momentum of intense art-making and staying open to serendipity and the surprising paths inspiration can take. After a difficult winter that brought grief, tears and some profound disappointments, I somehow moved to a point where I surrendered and accepted that I could only change myself and my outlook. This was liberating and freed me to realize my true purpose on the path I’m walking. During the darkest saddest times of this period in the icy barren months of January and February, I continued to knit and paint. One day while I was sitting and knitting a scarf, my husband commented on my irrepressible unstoppable creativity, which gave me the title for this salon. His words, and the energy and momentum of letting creativity flow, helped me remember who I am and why I’m here – to love unconditionally, make art, and nurture creativity everywhere and for everyone.
We can choose to live our lives focused on fear or on love. Fear only brings more fear and violence. Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Next week, I’ll write about an exciting project Liesette Paisner and I are working on with American Life Television Network and the “Realizing the Dream” Listening and Learning Tour by Martin Luther King III.
In the meantime, these words from the Dalai Lama, echo Black Elk and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and say it all.
Internal peace is an essential first step to achieving peace in the world. How do you cultivate it? It's very simple. In the first place by realizing clearly that all mankind is one, that human beings in every country are members of one and the same family.
— the Dalai Lama
Have a creative day and a night filled with inspirational dreams.
Charleen Touchette
SpiritBear, Please share how you saw a thousand hummingbirds? That sounds amazing.
Thanks Kate for your kind words. Think we all can inspire each other with a kind word or a smile. It takes so little effort, just like planting a seed, and you can't underestimate its effect. And you never know when it will be you who needs an encouraging word.
I'll be planting seeds and tending the garden, making art and knitting through Wednesday. Then Liesette and I return to Northern New Mexico, then down to Albuquerque with the American Life Television people. Next Monday June 11th, Martin Luther King III arrives in New Mexico and we'll be guiding him on the "Realizing the Dream" Listening and Learning Tour from June 11th-14th. I'll post info on two Town Meetings open to the public in Albuquerque and Truchas soon.
Charleen Touchette
Charleen, I love your message today.
Ok, folks, I am in New Mexico now. I just got back from the Los Ojos Saloon in which I had an unexpected conversation with a writer who helped remind me who I am.
Two things I must address:
I have to be honest with Kate. I hope this doesn't make you sad. When I said I had been in the presence of 1000 sleeping hummingbirds, I was shorthanding and not expecting to have to explain. I shouldn't have done that. The hummingbirds were permanently asleep in the catacombs of the Natural History Museum in Chicago, to which I had privvy through a friend who was studying bats. He showed me drawer after drawer down there of hummingbirds with tiny tags naming their species, each one a different irridescent colour. It was very sad yet beautiful that I got to see them, would not otherwise have ever seen all of that in my lifetime. I have never forgotten them...I guess it is important they were catalogued...I don't know if they were slaughtered or "found", I was afraid to ask. Maybe sometimes what the women do, what the anima of humanity does (be it male or female) is carry the dream and memory and honor of these things that are otherwise "killed".
Second, Charleen, you have made a decision for me tonight. We were trying to hook up satellite TV again here in the mountains while we are here. Today the TV man told us the only way our satellite will be able to connect with the satellite it is trying to poitn to is to cut limbs off a tall pine tree behind hour house - or even to cut it down. I just went out on the deck and told my Scottish husband: "I am making a woo woo proclamation: we will NOT cut trees or tree limbs in order to see junk on a satellite tv." He said solemnly, "I concur." He followed me into the house and said, "That wasn't woo woo. That was Scottish. In Scotland the woman's word is law."
Thank you, Charleen, for clarity.
SpiritBear
Hi SpiritBear,
Thanks for sharing. That is sweet of your husband.
Even times that seem darkest, the light of a good word can illuminate the heart.
sorry SB I took you literally. I had a wonderful image in my head conjured up of a thousand birds sighing as one at peace. I suppose they still are. Shari I finally got the image to come up. beautiful.!!!
kate
A lot of conversation has taken place since I last clicked in. The only male voice I identify is that of Robert, and that by indirect reference to the law of Scottish women. Where are the men in this conversation? There is a great concern of female energy and earthy support being expressed around this “kitchen” table.
Spiritbear in NM, I have also seen the hummingbird collection in the Natural History Museum in Chicago, the butterflys and thousands of other empty containers. I never thought of them sleeping. There was no life, empty shells they were that should have been given back years ago. The iridescence and color that remained gave little testament to the beautiful designs and extraordinary mechanics of form given to hummingbirds. Had they been sleeping the life force would have been overwhelming. Similar I imagine to watching babies sleep.
Often I miss the full experience of the moment because of symbols and remembrances, as I classify, categorize, making generalizations, and of course positions of judgment. I have created so many non-existence futures all based on any one of a number of ill remembered pasts. The act of creative expression is not what is left; there are no leftovers, no empty containers. Experience is changing to the moment. Our reality is uncertainty in transformation through time, within the certainty of transcending towards all time, the eternal. It takes faith every moment to be here right now.
The butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are extraordinary creatures, as all forms of life. The importance of the butterfly as symbol, is in the larval stage. Larva have no proof of their transformation. Without larva being what they are, butterflies do not exist. So that said, let’s all larval up and be the best possible.
Let's all larval up, I love that! Finally a male voice on this particular salon. Hmmm, do you think the word "matriarchy" scared anyone away? Shame shame, it should not! It should be a place from which to talk about the male and female energy in us all and in the planet itself.
Very welcome to you Brad, I suspect you were traveling as you often do. Any chance we may see you in NM this summer?
Kate, no, it is ME who should apologize, I didn't explain and of COURSE it was taken literally. It was one of my weird moments when I posted that cryptic thing. Brad is right, they were not sleeping, they were shells. Meanwhile, I love the startlement of bending down the other day in our Scottish garden to pick up something and spying a crawling beetle of irridescent colors like the hummingbirds have. I love those colors so much!!!
I relate to what you say, Brad, about planned futures that are based on past experiences and don't come to be...I was talking about that w/ my NM housesitter yesterday, we both are in a sort of limbo about our lives and learning to just sort of breathe softly and wait and watch and listen about "what's next", especially in terms of our homes and locations. We are both in transition in similar ways, revolving around the handing over of this particular shell (house) to whomever will next transform it. And she was saying she felt the energy of Rick's and my and now Bob's time in this house will be present to anyone who comes inside, even after we are gone. I think that is true, for a while, until the new person makes it theirs. Anyway, I'm rambling as usual!
But one last thought in that vein, I remember when I moved to Scotland and Brad said he would be curious to see what OTHER reasons I was needing to be and needed in Scotland, aside from my marriage to a Scotsman. I think I am beginning to understand some of the answers to those questions, it has taken almost two years to come to that place...
Charleen, I love what you said, "Even times that seem darkest, the light of a good word can illuminate the heart." It is so true, like the song says, words are all I have to take your heart away. Many words were said last night at the local pub, and I am still cogitating their meaning today...words can change a day. Until different words are said.
Have a good day all, I'm off to drive up and down the mountain here for a few hours and revisit haunts and ascertain the changes over the year.
SpiritBear
Here's my note from the universe which came right after the pine tree story SB.
Have you ever wondered why trees are such a happy lot, ShaRi?
They've mastered patience.
Not bad for wood, huh?
The Universe
Either that, ShaRi, or it's the music they listen to.
Thoughts become things... choose the good ones! ®
© www.tut.com ®
Love this conversation !
The insects were so well done I coulda sworn they were coming at me out of my monitor( wee bit of a phobia over here).This is one great place to live ( Western Massachusetts)...even tempered by the fact that I seem to be allergic to everything here !
I may finally become a tree hugger here.
Local slogans include:
Be a local hero...buy local produce !
So I'm a hero every week now.
I'm not to hep on wearing the hemp clothing though ( colors are just not deep and shiny enough for me !)
I'm actually hoping to find some local raw honey to help me with the allergies...
My blog ( one of three) is my art. I try to design every element you see.
Mixed Blood Radio On the Road with Martin Luther King III
on his "Realizing the Dream Listening and Learning Tour Across America" in Northern New Mexico June 11-14, 2007
Hope you are happy and healthy and your work is good.
Mixed Blood Radio just returned from guiding Martin Luther King III around Albuquerque and Northern New Mexico on his "Realizing the Dream Listening and Learning Tour" to end poverty.
An amazing week, and great honor to introduce Mr. King to our beautiful New Mexican people, from dynamic African-American, Chicano, and Hispanic community activists Diana Dorn-Jones, Sylvia Ledesma and Miquel Maestas, Land Grant Heirs in the South Broadway Neighborhood and South Valley, the articulate teen Bosque Conservation Corps, the children of Alamosa Neighborhood following Mr. King in a symbolic march and the curanderas at the Topahkal Health Cooperative, Wrestling Coach Mike Lujan and Mayor Martin Chavez in Albuquerque to the Land Grant Heirs in Chimayo, Cordova and Truchas, the Indian Pueblo Governors, Tribal Council Members, Elders, leaders, youth and tribal members at Picuris, Ohkah Owinghe and Santa Clara Pueblos, Native Radio Host Albert Raymond Cata, H.O.P.E. co-founder Marian Naranjo and Santa Fe Mayor David Coss in Northern New Mexico.
Liesette Paisner and I were honored to be asked to guide Mr. King by our dear friend Pearl Means who made beautiful arrangements, but was in South Dakota with her husband American Indian Leader Russell Means for the Sundance in the Paha Sapa, (Black Hills) which concluded on the New Moon. Liesette and Burning Sage Press' Sage Paisner photographed, and Raoul and Jacques Paisner videotaped the tour for TouchArt Ltd and Mixed Blood Radio.
It was heartening to see how Mr. King, and the memory of his father Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired New Mexicans of every age and ethnicity. Everywhere we went, New Mexicans told Mr. King how their spirits and determination to continue centuries of resistance and activism were bolstered by the work of his father and mother Mr. King told them the United States has the resources to end poverty, but has not yet mobilized the will. His Realizing the Dream tour aims to activate that will, so no child goes hungry and homeless in America.
I was honored to help add the voices of New Mexicans to the national dialog to end poverty. Our New Mexico people told Mr. King about how they, their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and their ancestors have worked for centuries to retain their culture and spirituality and raise their families amid poverty and massive loss of their land bases that present challenges that would crush most people, and how now their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren continue the work.
Mr. King will return to New Mexico for meetings with Elected Officials, Tribal Governors and community leaders in New Mexico to launch initiatives and form coalitions to help communities end poverty.
Wish success, happiness and health to you and your family circles.
One Earth/Think About It/Act Like It
Peace, Pax, Shalom, Salaam, Skenon,
Charleen Touchette
Mixed Blood Radio
www.touchart.net
TouchArt@aol.com
www.myspace/touchartbooks
Currently listening :
Equal Rights
By Peter Tosh
Release date: By 06 July, 1999
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