THE WIND THROUGH MY HOUSE:

A SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM PORTFOLIO

by

Sue Mosher

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts in Engaged Humanities with Emphasis in Depth Psychology

Pacifica Graduate Institute

April 4, 2009

ii

© 2009, Sue Mosher. Some Rights Reserved.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-

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visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/.

Noncommercial uses are thus permitted without any further permission

from the copyright owner, as long as attribution is given

to Sue Mosher, http://www.turtleflock.com.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license are administered by the author.

To request permission, contact sue@turtleflock.com.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The journey toward a more authentic and vital life is never one that is made alone.

I have been more fortunate than most, however, to travel in an extraordinary company of

fellow seekers, all of us held in the supportive—and occasionally combustive—container

that is Pacifica Graduate Institute. I am deeply indebted to the cohort that greeted me

when I arrived in February 2007 and the cohort for whom I had the privilege of providing

such a welcome in August 2008, a group that brought new energy to our band that had

been traveling together for 18 months. But herein I principally want to lift up the names

of those who have been my closest soul mates through the entire process—Andrew

Camargo, Vanessa Coriat, Keith Morrison, Pia Ossorio, Lana Williams, and especially

my “portfolio buddy,” Heidi Volf, with whom I’ve laughed and whined unreservedly. I

love you all and look forward to many years of friendship.

Each of our Pacifica professors has enriched and challenged my study and

development, but I am especially grateful to Joan Abraham, Jim Kline, Ana Mozol, and

Judie Piner for drawing out my best and deepest work and challenging me to open doors

that had been locked. So many others at Pacifica contributed to the unique learning

environment that we enjoyed on campus, especially those who managed and cared for the

grounds and buildings and prepared and served the delicious meals. We also could not

have done our work without Terry Utter and her maintenance of the online environment.

To research librarian Mark Kelly: I take back what I said about wanting to be you when I

grow up. You are a unique and amazing resource and just plain fun to be around; there’s

iv

no way I could ever duplicate what you do. To Dr. Cindy Carter, who was acting chair of

the Humanities program during most of my program: Thank you so much for calming my

panic that first day and being a gentle and firm presence thereafter.

I must also thank my spiritual community, Universalist National Memorial

Church in Washington, DC, and its pastor, Rev. Lillie Mae Henley, for their willingness

to participate in some of my class projects, for access to the pulpit, and for their ongoing

encouragement.

To my daughter, Annie: It has been a pleasure to swap papers with you as we

each move toward our academic goals.

To my husband, Robert: I deeply cherish the conversations we’ve had around my

studies. Even when there was not much I could say, because I was exploring another

place alone, I always felt the comfort of your embrace. Thank you also, for your

comments and proofreader’s marks on my papers. It’s wonderful to have another editor in

the house.

Finally, I am most grateful to the Beloved who lies beyond us, moves among us,

and dwells within us. Thank you, thank you for your presence, for the light toward which

I turn, and for all that great company, whether sentient or not, seen or not, breathing or

not, who feel the change.

v

DEDICATION

This portfolio is dedicated to my grandmother, Alice Blanche Estes Billingsley,

who late in life became a writer and a spiritual guide, and to Polly Agee, activist and

fundraiser, whose coaching helped awaken the destiny that drew me to Pacifica.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1

SECTION 1: PERSONAL DISCOVERY ...........................................................................6

ARTIFACT 1: AN APOCALYPTIC EXPERIENCE OF THE SELF ....................7

ARTIFACT 2: INGESTING THE MOON............................................................16

SECTION 2: ARCHETYPAL AWARENESS ..................................................................23

ARTIFACT 3: STRANGE NIGHT AT ROXY’S CAFÉ .....................................24

ARTIFACT 4: GILGAMESH AND THE LANDSCAPE ....................................30

ARTIFACT 5: ASKLEPION AND TEMENOS ...................................................34

ARTIFACT 6: A DEATH MARRIAGE RITUAL ...............................................39

ARTIFACT 7: LITTLE MARLENE REDEEMED ..............................................51

SECTION 3: PUBLIC WITNESS .....................................................................................62

ARTIFACT 8: A LETTER TO THE EDITOR .....................................................63

ARTIFACT 9: A SERMON ON RITUAL ............................................................66

ARTIFACT 10: PLACE KEEPERS WORKBOOK .............................................77

ARTIFACT 11: A LITANY OF INJUSTICE .......................................................92

ARTIFACT 12: TRACING THE TRUTH ............................................................98

vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Mandala........................................................................................................6

Source: Author

Figure 2. Photograph of sunset on August 16, 2007 .................................................10

Source: Author

Figure 3. Photograph of my clay double ...................................................................12

Source: Author

Figure 4. Pastel drawing ............................................................................................13

Source: Author

Figure 5. Mandala......................................................................................................23

Source: Author

Figure 6. “Brown Eye Blue” .....................................................................................27

Photograph by BritneyBush. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tzofia/

116516677/.

Figure 7. Mandala......................................................................................................62

Source: Author

INTRODUCTION

I pledge allegiance to the soil

of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity

under the sun

With joyful interpenetration for all.

Snyder, 1983, pp. 113–114

Spiritual activist is not a job title found in the newspaper classified ads or on the

Monster.com employment Web site. To become a spiritual activist requires a process of

self-discovery and self-definition. The aspirant must identify what spiritual activism

means within the context of one’s own life. This portfolio of two years of work

completed during my studies in the M.A. in Engaged Humanities program at Pacifica

Graduate Institute demonstrates what I have learned about myself and our world, what

specific issues call to me, and what skills I have acquired to engage others on those issues

in support of hope and healing. Two concepts are central to the vision of my own

spiritual activism—a sense of place and the permeability of myth and metaphor.

Many of the artifacts in this portfolio touch on the relationship of people to the

landscape or to the other spaces they inhabit. I believe that our connection to place is

critical to any effort to move toward an active understanding of how individuals and the

environment, local and global, are linked. The places we long for—and those that repel

us—often are metaphors for what is meaningful to us and thus may offer a starting point

for dialogue among people who might otherwise doubt that they have anything in

2

common. For example, Antjie Krog’s (1998) account of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission in South Africa is steeped in affection for the South African landscape;

perhaps the realization of their mutual love of that place was one of the factors that drove

the pro-apartheid government to reach out to the opposition.

My approach to place extends beyond the countryside to consider home spaces,

work spaces, and the other settings for our lives. I agree with James Hillman (1989) that

the wilderness should not be the only location where we can access soulful places. To try

to increase awareness of the variety of local places that speak to the spirit, I recently

began organizing visits to labyrinths, memorials, and other sites in the Washington, DC,

area.1 A densely populated city can support places of refuge and renewal with designs

that ―remembers nature’s contours, skin, and volumes‖ (Hillman, p. 103) in miniature,

even in fabricated spaces that contain no living elements.

The other core notion informing my work at Pacifica is the permeability of myth,

story, and metaphor. Richard Tarnas (2007) has noted that one of the gifts of

postmodernism is a radical pluralism in which many individuals find themselves

synthesizing multiple mythologies. This is a tense state, to be sure, but also a potentially

permeable one, for the absorption of multiple narratives allows a mythic metaphor that

resides in me to enter into a dialogue with the same metaphor in another. Thus, myth is

particularly well suited to help us ―bring into a single (if not necessarily harmonious)

1 More information about the DC Metro Labyrinths & Sacred Spaces Exploration

Group is available at http://www.meetup.com/dc-metro-labyrinths/.

3

conversation the genuinely different approaches that several cultures have made to

similar (if not the same) human problems‖ (Doniger, 1998, p. 71).

The key to that level of engagement is interpenetration of myth by myth, story by

story, metaphor by metaphor: not assimilation or even integration, but what James Fowler

(1986) has called ―ironic imagination—a capacity to see and be in one’s or one’s group’s

most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial

and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality‖ (p. 347). This, to me,

speaks to the core permeability of story and myth: being able to listen to someone else’s

cultural stories without judging them by the standards of my own mythology. Like

Gandhi (1958), ―I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to

be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as

possible‖ (p. 142). Rather than build a wall to protect my mythic metaphors from

contamination by others’ viewpoints, I want to see what windows the other person has

used to let in new light and what different color or texture of mortar has been used to fill

in the gaps between their myths and their actual experiences.

Underpinned by these currents of permeability and place, my transformation from

careers in journalism and desktop software into a spiritual activist unfolds in the three

sections of this portfolio: personal discovery, archetypal awareness, and public witness.

First, as Henri Nouwen (1975) maintained, ―No real dialogue is possible between

somebody and a nobody‖ (p. 66), and so it has been essential to explore my inner world

through self-reflection, dream work, and other techniques. The first two artifacts describe

specific encounters with archetypal forces that are representative of the awakening to self

that I have experienced during my studies at Pacifica.

4

Second, by studying myths, images, the landscape, and the psychological insights

that weave them together, I have sought an archetypal awareness that combines what

Michael Meade has described as a ―mythic sense . . . the antidote to literalism‖ (as cited

in Hansen, 2005, p. 20) with a ―narrative intelligence‖ (Atlee, 2003, ¶5) that recognizes

the power of story to inform and influence. The second section of the portfolio contains a

broad range of artifacts—fiction, ritual, and analysis of myth through depth psychological

principles—that explore some of the archetypes that emerge in myths as gods, heroes,

helpers, and foes. To uncover the essence of their stories, I visit them in places as diverse

as a coffee shop, the Waters of Death crossed by Gilgamesh, the ancient Greek asklepia,

and a fairy tale cottage. These artifacts represent the path that I have taken to a

psychological understanding of myth and an archetypal understanding of psychology that

can underpin my desire to be an agent for change.

Finally, the irresistible urge to apply this self-knowledge and mythic perspective

has led to the examples of public witness that form the concluding section of my

portfolio. I have attempted to engage specific issues—green space preservation, the

effectiveness of ritual, the reality of privilege, and the need for reconciliation—in ways

that move beyond the classroom. These artifacts reflect many possible approaches: a

letter to the editor, a sermon, personal confession, one-on-one dialogue, and a how-to

workbook. Experimenting with these different means of expression has helped me find

my own place to stand on these issues. Although I do not yet have a clear sense of where

or how I will be called upon to apply what I have learned, I can speak confidently with

my own voice when I encounter situations where I can no longer be silent.

5

References

Atlee, T. (2003). The power of story—the story paradigm. Retrieved December 1, 2008,

from http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-powerofstory.html

Doniger, W. (1998). The implied spider: Politics and theology in myth. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Fowler, J. (1996). Stages of faith. In J. W. Conn (Ed.), Women’s spirituality resources for

Christian development (2nd. ed., pp. 342–348). (New York: Paulist Press).

Gandhi, M. & Kripalani, K. (Ed.) (1958). All men are brothers: Autobiographical

reflections. New York: Continuum.

Hansen, M. T. (2005). Teachers of myth: Interviews on educational and psychological

uses of myth with adolescents. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books.

Hillman, J. (1989). A blue fire (T. Moore, Ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

Krog, A. (1998). Country of my skull: Guilt, sorrow, and the limits of forgiveness in the

new South Africa. New York: Times Books.

Nouwen, H. J. M. (1975). Reaching out: The three movements of the spiritual life. New

York: Doubleday.

Snyder, G. (1983). Axe handles. San Francisco: North Point Press.

Tarnas, R. (2007, August 16). Unpublished lecture given at Pacifica Graduate Institute,

Carpenteria, CA.

SECTION 1: PERSONAL DISCOVERY

Figure 1: Mandala. Source: Author.

ARTIFACT 1: AN APOCALYPTIC EXPERIENCE OF THE SELF ................................7

ARTIFACT 2: INGESTING THE MOON........................................................................16

ARTIFACT 1: AN APOCALYPTIC EXPERIENCE OF THE SELF

Prior to attending Pacifica, I enjoyed two successful careers—working first in

broadcast journalism and technology, then in desktop software support and development.

Both dealt mainly with facts and order. However, after more than 12 years as a self-

employed consultant, I was increasingly losing interest in the subject matter of a

computer guru and becoming fascinated with questions about how people learn and what

is worth learning or rediscovering. These deeper issues of meaning, beauty, and

imagination required a broader approach and eventually led me to Pacifica. What I did

not anticipate, though, was the degree to which this new way I had chosen would plunge

me into realms where the logic of my prior work life would hold little sway.

I wrote this artifact as an assignment for the Jung‘s Depth Psychology course in

which we were to reflect on an experience of the Self—the archetype of wholeness that

directs and organizes psychic life, gives rise to the conscious ego, and connects the

individual personality with the objective psyche or collective unconscious. The paper

describes a disturbing incident that fully awakened me to what Edward F. Edinger (1972)

has called ―the symbolic life‖ (p. 117). After this experience, I had no choice but to take

seriously my own encounters with archetypal forces and accounts of others‘ similar

adventures, regardless of how far they might deviate from the rationality of my former

careers.

8

Two aspects of this incident stand out in retrospect: the compulsion toward

physical expression and the oracular question that I received: ―If we give up the idea of

eternal life, do we get back the world?‖

One of the paradoxes of the symbolic life is that it is only by giving the imaginal

some concrete form that one can interact deeply with it. The objective psyche cannot

enter into consciousness without creating a relationship with the mundane world. Yet a

symbol by definition is only a pointer to the deeper implications that it indicates. The

impulse to sculpt, draw, write poetry, or invent ritual in response to a numinous

experience is not an attempt to capture the literal meaning of the event. Rather, it may be

an effort toward illumination on a more visceral level. Carl Jung (1916/1960), writing

about dreams, explained, ―Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a

visible form. . . . Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has

wrestled in vain‖ (p. 86). Furthermore, Professor Jim Kline said in response to my essay

(personal communication, June 2008) that artistic efforts such as mine can release the

internal energies that the Self generates in numinous experiences.

Regarding the content of the question, by ―the idea of eternal life,‖ I understood

not just the Christian idea of heaven, but also the puerile urge for immortality—so

reminiscent of Gilgamesh, whose epic we had studied in the Mythic Dimensions in

Personal Transformation class—which shows itself in our secular culture in such

expressions as ―it‘s all about me‖ or ―you Americans want to live forever.‖ To give up

that attitude would make it possible to ―get back the world‖ or, in other words, to regain a

holistic relationship both with the environment and with the diverse individual and

cultural viewpoints that comprise our world.

9

I also felt that the question posed a challenge to the religious lens I had brought to

Pacifica. For nearly 20 years, I have participated deeply in the life of a liberal Christian

community whose core idea is apokatastasis or universal salvation. To give up the idea

of eternal life could mean to relinquish the particular interpretation of apokatastasis that

holds that all people eventually will be united with God after death. In essence, the Self

had poked at and exposed a vulnerable spot—my inclination to measure whatever I

learned at Pacifica against the yardsticks held by my faith community. Yet, as Edinger

(1992) wrote, ―Only by awareness and acceptance of our weakness do we become

conscious of something beyond the ego that supports us‖ (p. 126). This question pushed

me to confront my own religious attitudes and trust that beyond the conventional idea of

eternal life lies a more comprehensive wholeness that encompasses not just some future

heaven, but the world we live in today, even as it shudders with ominous colors, strange

beauty, and brutal tragedy.

I find myself returning to this question often and have discover others asking it as

well. Parker Palmer (2004), for example, wondered whether the nonstop noise that our

culture worships might be ―a secular sign of ‗eternal life‘‖ (p. 160) and urged more

frequent contact with the silence that connects us with the mystery of where we come

from and where we are going. During the Models of National Transformation course, in

which we studied the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, I reframed

the question within the context of restorative justice: If we let go of our privilege, do we

gain true fullness of life? I keep asking that revised question as I move toward a more

active engagement with the communications, environmental, and social justice issues that

challenge us today.

10

An Apocalyptic Experience of the Self

There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the

approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out

what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.

von Franz, 1964, p. 170

In the early evening of Thursday, August 16, 2007, the sun descended toward the

Pacific Ocean in an apocalyptic orange haze. The Vaca fire on the other side of the hills

south of Santa Barbara had filled the air with ash, and a brown cloud hung heavily over

the area, leaving only a narrow band of bright sky above the horizon, glowing a sickly

yellow (Figure 2). On the Pacifica Graduate Institute campus, Richard Tarnas, author of

The Passion of the Western Mind (1993) and Cosmos and Psyche (2006), began his guest

lecture on the rite of passage that may be in store for the modern psyche. This

unpublished lecture followed the general outline of Tarnas‘ article ―Is the Modern Psyche

Figure 2: Sunset on August 16, 2007, as seen from the Pacifica

Graduate Institute campus in Carpenteria, CA. Source: Author.

11

Undergoing a Rite of Passage?‖ (2001) and addressed some of the themes we had

covered in our Mythic Dimensions in Personal Transformation class. I listened attentively

as Tarnas described the process by which differentiation of the ego from the archaic

participation mystique had given humankind autonomy, but at a great price: the shrinking

of the anima mundi or world-soul into the unconscious and thus the emptying of meaning

from the world.

Tarnas shifted to a description of the polarity of sun and moon and the modern

mind‘s one-sided identification with the sun, shining its scientific light. As he evoked the

idea of the solar principle being willing to go down into the night sky heroically for the

good of the whole, I began to shake. The smell of the brush fire became for me the smell

of the death of civilization. A cryptic question popped into my head, not directly related

to Tarnas‘ words: ―If we give up the idea of eternal life, do we get back the world?‖ As I

trembled, Tarnas concluded his lecture with a discussion of the lack of contemporary,

group-facilitated initiation experiences and the possibility that humankind is in a race

between initiation of the species as a whole and global catastrophe.

When the question-and-answer period was over and the lecture concluded, I could

barely stand, but I knew that I needed to breathe the night air. Once outside, I had to lean

against a post to steady myself. I was terrified and on the verge of tears. A classmate

noticed my distress and asked if I was OK. I told him about the shaking and the

unexpected question, and he acknowledged that he, too, had been strongly affected and

felt that Tarnas had spoken prophetically. Later, this classmate would describe my state

after the lecture as being ―full of numen‖ (personal communication, November 14, 2007).

12

The next day, as the Mythic Dimensions class continued, Professor Maren Hansen

gave us an hour to work with clay. The assignment was to create a double who could

provide balance and bring peace. Without any image in mind, I let my fingers squeeze the

clay until a small figure started to emerge (Figure 3). She was seated in a meditative

posture, ready to receive, but not centered. Her face turned to the left, as if she had made

a clear choice as to where to direct her attention. This exercise brought some clarity to

what I had experienced the night before. I understood that the day would be coming—and

soon—when my task would be to pick a place to stand and a direction toward which to

turn my face.

I was still very agitated. Since the clay work had been calming, I decided to try

other creative expression and picked up pastels and some paper. For the next four days, I

drew compulsively during almost every class break (Figure 4). This, too, helped ease the

tension. I began to relax and to be able to talk to people again. It was during this period

Figure 3: My clay double. Source: Author.

13

that I first encountered in a dream the inner guide whom I call Grandmother Color-

Healer.

Figure 4: Pastel drawing made during class breaks during the

August 2007 residential session at Pacifica. Source: Author.

The impulse to put color on paper persisted after our summer residential ended

and eventually blossomed in November into a week‘s worth of daily mandalas. Later that

month, I had the opportunity to speak with Tarnas about my experience and to share my

cryptic question, not in expectation of an answer, but as a gift offered to further his work.

He commented that the emergence of a sensitivity to colors is often a sign that the

process of individuation is strongly under way.

My conversation with Tarnas was friendly, but not numinous. That did not

surprise me. I had come to realize by then that his lecture was either the catalyst for my

August experience (perhaps in conjunction with the eerie atmosphere created by the

falling ash and strange light) or a synchronistic event, but it was not the direct cause.

14

When this incident occurred, I was just beginning to understand the concept of the Self

and had no notion at all of an experience of the Self. However, now it is quite clear to me

that this is what occurred. I was attuned to something so essential that night that it has the

potential to define my action for years to come—maybe even for the rest of my life. Yet

when I look back at my notes, I see no world-changing words at the moment when I

started to feel shaken. It was as if there was some content between the words that my

conscious mind could not write down, but that my unconscious immediately understood.

As troubling as this experience was, I have cherished it and reflected on it often, knowing

instinctively as Marie-Louise von Franz (1964) described in the quotation at the

beginning of this paper, that the time has come to face the approaching darkness and

fathom its purpose.

15

References

Edinger, E. F. (1972). Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the

psyche. New York: Penguin Books.

Franz, M.-L. von (1964). The process of individuation. In C. G. Jung & M.-L. von Franz

(Eds.), Man and his symbols. New York: Dell.

Jung, C. G. (1960). The transcendent function. In R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), The collected

works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, pp. 67–91). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press. (Original work published 1916)

Palmer, P. J. (2004). A hidden wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life. San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tarnas, R. (1993). The passion of the Western mind: Understanding the ideas that have

shaped our world view. New York: Ballantine Books.

Tarnas, R. (2001). Is the modern psyche undergoing a rite of passage? Retrieved June 20,

2008, from http://www.cosmosandpsyche.com/pdf/RevisionRiteofPassage.pdf

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and psyche: Intimations of a new world view. New York:

Viking.

ARTIFACT 2: INGESTING THE MOON

Why not become the one who lives with a

full moon in each eye that is

always saying,

with that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in

this world is

dying to

hear?

Hafiz, 2002, p. 75

This artifact that follows is a reflection on how the moon deity mirrors the

unconscious. Written for the Jung’s Depth Psychology course, it follows closely on the

heels of a dream in which I was offered many different types of moon-related food, such

as round cakes, but ignored them all. Jim Kline, the class instructor, observed that my

dream-self obsessively clung to ―brain food‖ in the form of books, papers, and a peanut

butter sandwich (which happens to be my usual lunch when I am writing), while rejecting

the more mysterious ―moon food‖ (personal communication, July 19, 2008).

Yet the dream also contained numinous elements. A teacher handed me a small

cake for another student. After I found the student and gave her the cake, the night sky

erupted with light:

I look up at the sky and see one shooting star, then another and another. I grab the

other student and make her sit with me to watch. The sky explodes with so many

shooting stars that they form great white vortexes. Some of the star paths have

little white vector arrows on the ends. (Author’s dream, July 4, 2008)

17

The star show stimulated my exploration of the moon’s divine mystery in this paper, for

both the moon and the stars offered examples of humanity’s engagement with the original

store of symbolic images—nature itself.

Landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy (2004) has noted that no matter how

distant the sky might seem, it can be drawn closer through the use of a reflecting pool.

This liquid quality is present in my paper in both its images and the process of writing. At

first, I struggled to get a handle on the assignment, to find a way to hold onto the moon

deities. But, just as in my dream, I could not swallow the moon. What finally overcame

my procrastination was to moisten the moon’s light by bringing it down to my own

internal reflecting pool. In doing so, I learned the utility of sometimes approaching an

archetype image obliquely, rather than directly, so as to avoid choking on its lessons. As

a result, I feel better equipped to consume a more balanced diet of archetypal wisdom and

rational knowledge.

18

Ingesting the Moon

As we began our study of moon symbolism, moon deities, and moon rituals, the

moon demanded my attention but remained elusive as I sought its meaning. On the day of

the new moon, July 3, 2008, I visited an exhibit on Bhutan that mentioned the festival use

of moon cakes. That evening, I emerged from my yoga class with an intense craving for a

large, dark chocolate cookie. In the early morning hours, I dreamed that I was carrying a

flat cake like the classic Southern ―moon pie‖ as well as some other round food object,

perhaps a quesadilla, as it was a light color. But I wanted to eat a peanut butter sandwich

instead!

Why did I hunger for the chocolate cookie—an apt symbol for the new moon—in

waking life, but reject the moon-related foods in my dream? Even though I found

fascinating the ways in which humankind has revered the moon and incorporated its

essential theme of life, death, and renewal into many deities, I resisted writing this

reflection and did other assignments until I ran out of excuses for not finishing this one.

Was I avoiding what the moon had to say? Or is the moon simply less relevant to me than

it would have been to the ancients? The moon is hardly less impressive today than it was

in ages past. Even in urban areas, where the stars are hard to see against a sky that is

more gray than black, the moon still holds sway. People often marvel at the size of a

harvest moon and enjoy the brightness of a summer or winter moon.

Looking for a clue to my resistance, I considered how I do not perceive the moon

as most people do. With my right eye, it appears as a crisp white disk, its shadowy

features clearly visible. My left eye sees something completely different. Last year, a few

weeks after an apocalyptic experience of the Self (Artifact 1 in this portfolio), I found

19

that the fuzziness in my left eye was not due to a glasses prescription that needed to be

updated. Instead, I learned that I had a cataract, and I gradually became aware that it gave

me not the usual double vision common to cataracts, but triple vision. Thus, with my left

eye, even with glasses, I always see three moons, and if I look with both eyes, the triple

aspect blends with the single disk. Someone from an ancient tradition might say that the

triple goddess, Hecate-the-Three-Headed, had revealed herself to me. Usually she

manifests through the tri-fold sequence of the waxing moon, the full moon, and the moon

that wanes and then goes dark (Harding, 1971). To see the goddess in her triple form at

all times, not just over the course of a month, could be a sign of her enduring power to

draw together the world of aspiration above, the earthly material realm, and the

underworld of fecundity and soul.

Could that be what I was resisting—not so much the presence of the moon deity,

but the existence of such disparate regions within my own personality? M. Esther

Harding (1971) wrote, ―Unconscious factors of the psyche are first sensed, not in

concepts, but are perceived in the outer world, projected into inanimate nature‖ (p. 19). I

found myself wishing that I had a pool in my backyard in which to view the reflected

moon, to bring it closer for extended gazing. The moon has a liquid aspect that we can

carry into daylight as the semi-precious gem known as moonstone, in which light seems

to swim in translucence. A few weeks ago, I felt compelled to draw a mandala (Figure 1)

that shows a breast or udder in the sky dripping into an alchemical vessel from which

reach up hands, as if in worship. The unconscious thirsts for ―the moistening power of the

goddess‖ (p. 110), bringing rain or dew and thus fertility and creativity.

20

If I sat by the pool through the weeks and watched the moon wane then wax

again, the water would contain no less of the moon during its dark phases. Whether full

or dark or crescent, it would always be there, a constant presence, but not a static one.

Speeded up, a film of the phases of the moon would show that cycle pulsing with light

and active energy.

How hard it is to capture the liquid moonlight itself! If you dip your hand into the

moon’s reflection in a pool, it ripples away into slippery fragments. In such activation,

Joseph Campbell (2003) found an image of eternal, ongoing creation:

What we see are lights coming and going, coming and going—the ripples on the

pond. Those lights are ourselves, and we think of ourselves as this light to be

preserved: here I am; oh dear, now I’m gone.

The Eastern texts tell us, rather, ―Don’t identify yourself with that little

shimmering light. Identify yourself with that source of light that is reflected in this

shimmer with which you have identified yourself.‖ (p. 53)

This part of the moon’s divine mystery ties it to the unconscious: Its emanations

cannot be pinned down and grasped firmly. Humankind has found many ways to relate to

the moon as a celestial power—through a stone, a tree, the cow, and other animals; or as

the man in the moon who becomes a dying and resurrecting god, with a special rapport

with women; or ultimately, as a great Mother who marries the moon and gives birth to

the moon, embodying in herself the full cycle of birth, generation, and death. These

figures overlap and interweave until it is hard to imagine any end to the ways in which

we relate to the moon deities. In that intertwining, too, lies a connection with the

unconscious, which is also infinite in the variety of interconnections among the

archetypes that embody its energies.

21

No wonder I found the moon so hard to swallow. We can ingest it only if we are

patiently receptive and wait for its still drops of reflective dew to form, distilled from the

hidden inner sources.

22

References

Campbell, J. (2003). Myths of light: Eastern metaphors of the eternal. Novato, CA: New

World Library.

Hafiz, S. M. (2002). With that moon language. In D. Ladinsky, Love poems from God

(p. 75). New York: Penguin Compass.

Harding, M. E. (1971). Woman’s mysteries: Ancient and modern. Boston: Shambhala.

Messervy, J. M. (2004). The meaning of the garden in human life [Electronic version].

Acta Horticulturae, 642, 79–99.

SECTION 2: ARCHETYPAL AWARENESS

Figure 5: Mandala. Source: Author.

ARTIFACT 3: STRANGE NIGHT AT ROXY’S CAFÉ .................................................24

ARTIFACT 4: GILGAMESH AND THE LANDSCAPE ................................................30

ARTIFACT 5: ASKLEPION AND TEMENOS ...............................................................34

ARTIFACT 6: A DEATH MARRIAGE RITUAL ...........................................................39

ARTIFACT 7: LITTLE MARLENE REDEEMED ..........................................................51

ARTIFACT 3: STRANGE NIGHT AT ROXY’S CAFÉ

I wrote this fictionalized account of an actual online chat session as one of the

blog posts required in the Personal Interactions with Technology course during my first

quarter at Pacifica. Although I have been a writer and editor since I published a

neighborhood newspaper at about age 10, most of that work has consisted of news and

technical writing. Blogging was something completely different, and it loosened my

writing muscles considerably. The course instructor, Roxana Khan—the Roxy of the

artifact’s title—required us to post at least five entries to our blogs during the quarter.

Knowing that only my instructor, classmates, and trusted family and friends were likely

to read these posts, I felt free to experiment with this new medium.

For this artifact, I took a real-life event, in which three of us students failed in our

attempts to get into the same chat room simultaneously, and imagined it as a

mythological story involving gods and hidden forces, concluding with the type of moral

lesson that I thought an actual myth might convey. The divine characters in the story

corresponded to the gods we were researching as another requirement of the same course.

I was quite fascinated, for example, with the polymorphous nature of my research

subject, Horus, and so I gave him a quick costume change. I was delighted to find out

later that art had even imitated life in an unexpected way: While waiting to get into the

chat room, the classmate researching Thor had drawn and written on the ―wall‖ of the

course software’s shared drawing feature, in effect reproducing the Viking graffiti that I

had seen years earlier inside the Stone Age tomb of Maes Howe in the Orkney Islands of

25

Scotland (Towrie, n.d.). I came away with a sense of how some myths may have grown

from actual experiences, just as my story had its roots in a real chat session.

This artifact also reflects my introduction to several important tools besides

blogging. I became aware of the vast image resources available on Web sites like Flickr2

and learned about Creative Commons licensing, an alternative to conventional copyright

protection for ―any . . . creator who would like to share their work while still retaining

some rights‖ (Licensing and Marking Your Content, n.d., p. 1). Most meaningful, though,

was the opportunity to explore the more creative side of my writing. As I began the

transition from the world of technology to the realms of mythology and psychology, this

artifact exposed a latent playfulness that has led me into new inner explorations and, on

the practical side, helped me become a more effective communicator.

2 The Flickr image-sharing Web site is located at http://www.flickr.com.

26

Strange Night at Roxy’s Café

Horus, Coyote, and Thor went to their favorite café one evening this week.

Prometheus had planned to join them, but he went to bed early; it’s hard to get a good

night’s sleep when your liver is healing from being torn by an eagle all day long. They

were hoping to get a mega dose of magnificent mocha from Roxy, the star barista, but the

café atmosphere was rather odd.

It’s not that big a café, just a couple of rooms, and hardly busy at 10 at night, but

Coyote was told he couldn’t get in because he was already in. The same thing happened

to Thor: He couldn’t enter the café because he was already inside. How very odd! To be

in, but not in. And too bad, because they’d both dressed up for the occasion. Coyote was

in a fine black suit, and Thor sported a new helmet and armor obtained at the Nebula.

Horus was able to enter the café, but when he didn’t see either of the other two there, he

went off to the bathroom to change into a different aspect; drinking coffee gets messy

when you have a beak for a mouth. He chose his Harpokrates (Horus-the-child) look, an

athletic youth with a fashionably long side lock and a touch of eyeliner to suggest the

udjat eye (Figure 6).

―Blue is a nice change from my usual black eyeliner,‖ thought Horus.

Horus ordered a cup of mocha java from Roxy and then noticed the sign over the

espresso machine: ―Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have no fresh coffee.

All the coffee is made from old beans, batch number 7. We had to destroy our most

recent coffee shipments because they produced a hallucinatory brew that makes you feel

like you’re in, but not in.‖

27

Figure 6: Brown Eye Blue, self-portrait photograph by BrittneyBush.3

Bewildered, the three friends exchanged text messages and confirmed that they

were all indeed at the right café. (Fortunately, this didn’t happen the night of the

Blackberry blackout.) Horus found a private room that had a back door and opened it to

let Thor in. Thor found another room and let Coyote in, but there was no way all three

could be in the same room.

I asked Horus later why the three of them, with all their divine powers, couldn’t

have just opened a door between the private rooms. He said that even gods have limits,

that they still have to play by the rules of the universe. The main difference between

humans and gods, he explained, is that humans see only part of the rules, while gods

know them all. What keeps the gods so aware of these universal truths is the way humans

Note: Figure 6 photo is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tzofia/116516677/ and is used

under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0

Generic license.

28

keep retelling creation stories, constantly adapting them to fit new surroundings and new

cultures. As Marie-Louise von Franz (1998) wrote, ―The unconscious re-tells part of the

creation myth to restore conscious life and the conscious awareness of reality again‖

(p. 252). We humans are not aware of what we are doing when we keep the gods alive in

this way.

29

References

Franz, M.-L. von (1998). The creation myth. In C. G. Jung & R. A. Segal (Ed.), Jung on

mythology (pp. 240–255). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Licensing and marking your content with Creative Commons. (n.d.) Retrieved December

10, 2008, from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/61/Creativecommons-

licensing-and-marking-your-content_eng.pdf

Towrie, S. (n.d.). Maeshowe’s runes—Viking graffiti. Retrieved November 19, 2008,

from http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm

ARTIFACT 4: GILGAMESH AND THE LANDSCAPE

The fundamental language of depth . . . is space. Depth presents itself foremost as

psychic structures in spatial metaphors.

Hillman, 1979, p. 188

Book XI of the epic of Gilgamesh (Mitchell, 2004) ends without providing a

satisfactory answer to the question of whether Gilgamesh returned home from his

adventures a changed man. Was he still an arrogant king despoiling nature, oppressing

his subjects, and offending the gods? Or did he learn to rule wisely? What convinced me

that he indeed was transformed were the details in a small section of Book X, only 19

lines, that describe his journey to visit Utnapishtim, survivor of the great flood and holder

of the secret of eternal life. In the artifact that follows, I analyzed this passage with an eye

toward how Gilgamesh’s relationship to the landscape changes during the voyage,

reflecting a new attitude toward other people, the environment, and the gods.

This study was revelatory for me on two levels: I experienced rich insights from

exploring images down to their finest details—a technique that applies not just to myths,

but also to understanding dreams and art. In addition, I saw specifically how the spatial

details of a story—its location and the relationship of the characters to their

environment—can hold key elements that may not be expressed directly in the text.

Having written this analysis at the end of my second semester at Pacifica, I felt that I had

acquired skills that would be exceedingly useful both to my personal work with dreams

and active imagination and to my continuing study of myth and archetype.

31

Poles and Sea: The Water Journey of Gilgamesh

In Book X of the Gilgamesh epic, the king needs help from Urshanabi, a boatman,

to reach the distant shore where dwells Utnapishtim, who holds the secret of eternal life.

They make a journey in three parts—using flowing water, human effort, and wind—a

passage whose details signal the beginning of Gilgamesh’s transformation from an

arrogant king to a more self-aware human being.

Stephen Mitchell’s (2004) text says that they sail for the first part of the journey,

but this is inconsistent with the final segment, in which Gilgamesh holds Urshanabi’s

robe as a sail, thus indicating that the boat originally has no sailing mast. It is more

plausible that the first phase takes place along moving water that requires no means of

propulsion. Water is ―the most important agent in fecundity‖ (Niederland, 1956, ¶ 4) and

flowing water in particular, ―a healing and purifying agent‖ (Niederland, Mythology,

History, and Geography section, ¶ 3). Given that they travel in three days a distance

normally crossed in six weeks, their course could be along a river in flood.

Descending a mighty river’s flow, Gilgamesh can rest briefly and gather strength

from the unconscious for the second, more arduous part of the journey, across the

stagnant Waters of Death, reminiscent of the ―slimy sea‖ of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s

―Rime of the Ancient Mariner‖ (1927, p. 452). Although Gilgamesh destroyed the Stone

Men, who normally would propel the boat, Urshanabi offers an alternative plan before

they set out: Gilgamesh must cut enough poles from a pine forest to be able to push the

boat through the deadly sea into more hospitable waters. The last time Gilgamesh felled

trees was in the Cedar Forest, an adventure that came to a bitter end with the eventual

death of his friend, Enkidu, but in this instance, Gilgamesh uses the products of nature

32

conscientiously, for a specific purpose, rather than abusing it. Thus equipped, Gilgamesh

pushes one pole after the other through the toxic water.

Finally, still short of their goal, Gilgamesh takes on the form of a tree trunk

himself, planted in the boat as a mast, Urshanabi’s robe gathering the wind to propel

them. Gilgamesh has no civilized garments of his own, having replaced them with animal

skins as he wandered in grief and despair after his friend’s death, leaving reason behind.

Thus, he must borrow a robe, accepting the help of a fellow being and humbly clothing

himself once again with humanity, to reach his goal. Furthermore, the other shore cannot

be gained by Gilgamesh’s own effort; he must allow the wind to glide the boat to its

landing. In the Sumerian pantheon, the wind god is Enlil (Marcus & Pettinato, 2005), the

same god who decreed that Enkidu must die. Standing in the boat, Gilgamesh offers

himself to the wind, to Enlil, as a conquered state might offer trees as tribute. Trees were

prized in Mesopotamia as spoils of war (Roberts, 2006), as evidenced in Gilgamesh’s

greedy hewing of the Cedar Forest after his victory over Humbaba. By submitting to the

will of the gods, while he also accepts a loan from his fellow traveler, Gilgamesh acts not

as an inflated ego, but with connection to other people and dependence on the invisible

world of the unconscious. These initial steps toward transformation prepare him to meet

Utnapishtim without the need to do battle. Instead, Gilgamesh arrives ready to listen to

his ancient ancestor reveal the secrets of the gods.

33

References

Coleridge, S. T. (1927). The rime of the ancient mariner. In W. A. Briggs (Ed.), Great

poems of the English language. New York: Tudor.

Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: HarperPerennial.

Marcus, D., & Pettinato, G. (2005). Enlil. In L. Jones (Ed.), Encyclopedia of

Religion, Vol. 4. (2nd ed., pp. 2799–2801). Detroit: Macmillan Reference

USA. Retrieved July 30, 2007, from the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Mitchell, S. (2004). Gilgamesh: A new English version. New York: Free Press.

Niederland, W. G. (1956). River symbolism: Part 1, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 25, 469–

504. Retrieved July 30, 2007, from PEP Archive database.

Roberts, J. (2006, July). ―Centering the world‖: Trees as tribute in the ancient Near East.

Transoxiana: Journal Libre de Estudios Orientales, 11. Retrieved July 30, 2007,

from http://www.transoxiana.org/11/roberts-near_east_trees.html

ARTIFACT 5: ASKLEPION AND TEMENOS

Exploration of sacred spaces is one of my great pleasures. After spending some

quiet moments in a seminary chapel with my pastor, I confided that I rarely get the same

quality of centeredness in a space that has not been dedicated to spiritual purposes. She

responded wisely that any other type of place must rededicated every time one enters,

whether consciously or unconsciously (L. M. Henley, personal communication, July 12,

2008). Therefore, it makes sense to perform such a consecration intentionally any time

one wishes to create or enter sacred space. Many of our courses have covered this topic,

which I will touch on further in the sermon that comprises Artifact 9 in this portfolio.

The current artifact explored the enduring, healing nature of sacred space by

associating the modern analyst‘s consulting room with the incubation rituals held in

ancient Greek temples. Even though I am not training to be a therapist or analyst, an

understanding of the temenos concept and the importance of physical setting is critical to

my own personal spiritual practices. Knowing how to create the proper environment for

dialogue is also an important skill for a spiritual activist. Furthermore, I was struck with

Henry Abramovitch‘s (1997; 2002) experience of disruptions in the link between place

and person and the implications for creating a temenos where either the healer or the

location might be shifted or even absent. Having experienced a safe container in the

online classroom environment that Pacifica uses, I can offer my own observation that a

temenos may exist even in cyberspace, beyond any physical place or personal presence.

35

Asklepion and Temenos

Sigmund Freud is credited with the development of a treatment method for

psychological disorders in which the patient regularly visits a specific room to lie on a

couch and speak on any subject to an analyst who is ―seeing but unseen‖ (Ellenberger,

1970, p. 522). The notion of healing through a solitary sojourn in a sacred space is

nothing new: Greek and Egyptian temples hosted supplicants who entered sleep hoping to

receive a curing dream (Hamilton, 1906). Even though the modern patient shares the

room with the analyst and any couch is used for talking, not dreaming, these disparate

therapeutic practices—ancient and modern—have much in common. The temple and the

analyst‘s office exemplify what Carl Jung (1952/1974) called a temenos, which he

defined as ―a taboo area where [the dreamer] will be able to meet the unconscious‖

(p. 128).

A well documented use of such an enclosure occurred in Greece, where at

Epidauros stood the chief temple to Asklepios, son of Apollo, along with a separate

building, the abaton, where supplicants slept in hopes of a cure (Trzaskoma, Smith, &

Brunet, 2004). Tablets in the temple provided details of cases in which people dreamed

that the god gave them instructions or healed them directly. More than 300 other Greek

cities had their own Asklepeia (Devereux, Krippner, Tartz, & Fish, 2006) to support this

ritual, known as incubation.

The therapeutic practice of sleep in a sacred precinct continued well past the

classical era. According to Mary Hamilton (1906), the Asklepeia were among the last

bastions of paganism in a Christianizing Europe, and many churches adopted

incubational healing practices in the names of various saints, including Cosmas and

36

Damian, Therapon, Thekla, and the archangel Michael. Visitors to the healing spring of

Madron Well in Cornwall slept in the adjacent chapel until about the 17th century

(Devereux et al., 2006). Alexander Carmichael (1994), in his collection of 19th century

Scottish folk wisdom and practices, documented a cure for madness that involved

spending a night in a church. At the beginning of the 20th century, Hamilton recounted

incubation rites that were occurring regularly as part of saints‘ day festivals and also

occasionally as individual initiatives. Incubational dreams play an important role in

contemporary pilgrimages to Mount Meron in Israel, where pilgrims believe the spirit of

Rabbi Shimeon Bar Yochai may visit them as they sleep in his tomb (Abramovitch,

1997). Similar pilgrimages take place among Muslims in Morocco (Musk, 1988).

Freud‘s development of the psychoanalytic technique transferred the abaton to the

analyst‘s office. While the patients did not actually dream on the couch, they did share

their dreams with the analyst, who sat out of sight, almost as a godlike unseen presence.

Jung developed the concept of the therapeutic space as temenos more explicitly,

understanding it both as a physical space and as a psychological container for the

analysis, bounded by the ―protective steadiness of the therapist‖ (Siegelman, 1990,

p. 177). Protection is the key concept. The temenos protects the analysand from unwanted

outside influences and also prevents potentially dangerous psychic content from escaping

into the everyday world. This safe container encourages attention to the utterances of the

unconscious, just as the abaton brought forth healing dreams. As one Pacifica professor

responded to a paper in which I disclosed some disturbing recollections, when the

analytic container is perceived as strong and safe enough, shadow energies can emerge

from their hiding places (A. Mozol, personal communication, August 14, 2008).

37

Yet Jung‘s concept of the temenos differs substantially from the isolation of the

Asklepion or the Freudian analyst‘s consulting room, because the Jungian therapist is

fully visible, engaged, and as likely to be changed as the patient (Siegelman, 1990). The

container allows the presences of the therapist and client to transform through their

expansion and interaction, as in a sealed alchemical vessel. Henry Abramovitch (1997)

has explained that in Jungian practice, the temenos is formed from the union of the

physical space and therapist as ―the healing archetype is projected onto both the person of

the healer and the place in which he or she works, simultaneously‖ (p. 576). The

association of healing with the place can be quite strong, persisting even without the

presence of the therapist. In one case, he allowed an elderly analysand, who recently had

lost her last living relative, to come to his office while he was away for a sabbatical

(Abramovitch, 2002). Having agreed to water his plants, she could feel securely held in

that familiar place even in her therapist‘s absence.

The Oxford English Dictionary has defined the term incubation not just as

hatching eggs or sleeping in ancient temples, but also as ―the ‗brooding‘ or ‗moving‘ of

the Divine Spirit over the face of the chaos at the Creation‖ (Incubation, 1989, ¶ 2) as

recorded in the book of Genesis. Whether in a Neolithic cave, a Greek temple, a chapel at

a holy well, or an analyst‘s office, a sacred space guarded from external hazards can

create an atmosphere where the spirit can not only move but expand, be heard, and

interact with healing presence.

38

References

Abramovitch, H. (1997). Temenos lost: Reflections on moving. Journal of Analytical

Psychology, 42(4), 569–584. Retrieved October 11, 2008, from Academic Search

Premier database.

Abramovitch, H. (2002). Temenos regained: Reflections on the absence of the analyst.

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 47(4), 583–598. Retrieved October 11, 2008,

from Academic Search Premier database.

Carmichael, A. (1994). Carmina Gadelica. Edinburgh, U.K.: Floris Books.

Devereux, P., Krippner, S., Tartz, R., & Fish, A. (2006). Comparing home dream reports

with reports from English and Welsh ―sacred sites.‖ ReVision, 28(4), 36–45.

Retrieved October 11, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and evolution of

dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Hamilton, M. (1906). Incubation: Or, the cure of disease in pagan temples and Christian

churches [Digitized version]. St. Andrew‘s, U.K.: W.C. Henderson. Retrieved

October 11, 2008, from http://books.google.com/books?id=hGAAAAAAMAAJ

Incubation. (1989). Oxford English dictionary (2nd ed.) [Electronic version]. Retrieved

October 11, 2008, from http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50114901

Jung, C. G. (1974). Individual dream symbolism in relation to alchemy. In R. F. C. Hull

(Trans.), Dreams, (pp. 113–297). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

(Original work published 1952)

Musk, B. (1988). Dreams and the ordinary Muslim. Missiology, 16(2), 163–172.

Retrieved October 11, 2008, from ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials

database.

Siegelman, E. Y. (1990). Metaphors of the therapeutic encounter. Journal of Analytical

Psychology, 35(2), 175–191. Retrieved October 11, 2008, from Academic Search

Premier database.

Trzaskoma, S. M., Smith, R. S., & Brunet, S. (Eds. & Trans.). (2004). Anthology of

classical myth: Primary sources in translation. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

ARTIFACT 6: A DEATH MARRIAGE RITUAL

This artifact, the second of two pieces of creative writing in my portfolio, was

conceived for an assignment in the Mythodrama course to re-imagine a scene or theme

from the Eros and Psyche myth. I chose to explore the death marriage, the sacrifice of a

woman by uniting her to a god, because this ritual was one that I had found profoundly

alien and foreboding ever since I encountered it many years ago, when I first read C. S.

Lewis’ retelling of the myth, Till We Have Faces (1956). Considering Wendy Doniger’s

(1998) notion of the utility of both telescopes and microscopes for the study of myth, I

decided that my discomfort demanded an approach on the cellular rather than the

comparative level, and so I decided to develop a death marriage ritual and then enter into

it imaginally.

I gave the ritual an air of authenticity and yet originality by drawing on both

classical and later sources, in the spirit of contemporary playwright Mary Zimmerman,

whose Metamorphoses (2002) and Argonautica (2008) have moved me greatly. Shortly

before this assignment was due, I visited Istanbul, where I spent some time examining

sarcophagi and grave steles. The images and translated inscriptions from those objects

helped draw my imagination toward death and the opening of a way into the underworld.

As for the setting, I had become intrigued with the concept of the island as a metaphor for

the individuation process after reading Julie Moir Messervy’s (1995) description of an

island’s archetypal quality as a place of ―awayness‖ where one can ―feel oneself as the

center of a circle, surrounded by a horizon line that seems endless‖ (p. 35).

40

The idea of recording and listening to the ritual to enhance my vision of the

initiate’s journey actually came rather late in the writing process but, in the end, was what

made it a personally meaningful assignment. I was able to enter into the ritual and be

carried away by the sights, sounds, and even the mud between the initiate’s toes.

That sensation of standing in water, between the old personality and the new, led

me to consider that the concept of mythic permeability discussed in the introduction to

this portfolio might be likened to river banks that guide the waters and are themselves

changed, but only gradually, by the flow. Where the river curves—sets off in a new

direction—one bank is enriched by the silt and the debris that deposits itself on the shore,

while the other erodes. But, except in flood times, those changes to the banks are

imperceptible to the casual observer. This image captured for me the difference between

identity and empathy: It suggests that allowing someone else’s engagement with the

archetypal to flow through me can enrich my understanding, even if it falls short of

triggering my own personal transformation. I do not need to identify with the other’s

experience to grasp its power and meaning. As an aspiring spiritual activist who seeks to

cultivate empathy, I am very encouraged by this exercise in working with disturbing

archetypal content in such a way that I can come away with at least some small sense of

what the participants might have felt.

41

The Death Marriage: A Ritual

In the spirit of theatre as redeeming ceremony, I imagined an initiation ritual to

induct candidates into a group of adult women who celebrate the feminine mysteries as

followers of Psyche. The ritual would consist of the three phases laid out by Victor

Turner (1987), following Van Gennep—―separation, margin (or limen), and aggregation‖

(p. 5). The first phase would deliver the candidate into a marriage of death, separating her

from the community by betrothing her to an unseen god. The concluding rite would be,

by contrast, a celebration of the return of the successful initiate and the recounting of her

ordeal. These opening and concluding ceremonies would comprise the standardized

portions of the ritual that all initiates would undergo. The middle portion, however,

would be customized for each initiate with a series of challenges that would utilize the

four elements and engage C. G. Jung’s four psychological functions (Whitmont, 1991) in

ways appropriate to the individual. (In an earlier paper for the Psychology of Compassion

& Tolerance course, I had explored the role of Psyche’s four tasks in strengthening the

four psychological functions and preparing her for the final undertaking—her decision to

open the beauty box, which restores her relationship with Eros as one of deep connection,

not projection.)

The idea of the death marriage felt very alien and discomforting to me—a sure

sign that within lay a mystery worth approaching. Therefore, I decided to concentrate in

this paper exclusively on that aspect of the ritual. Although the death marriage stands

opposed to modern sensibilities in its demand that a woman let go and surrender to her

instincts, M. Esther Harding (1971) explained how such submission can lead to

transformation:

42

Through the acceptance of the power of instinct within her, while at the same time

renouncing all claim to possessiveness in regard to it, a woman gains a new

relationship to herself. The power of instinct within her is recognized as

belonging not to herself but to the nonhuman realm, to the goddess, whom she

must serve, for whom her body must be a worthy vessel. Through such an attitude

she is transformed. The conventional control of her egoistic desirousness is no

longer needed because it has been in actual fact transformed. (p. 151)

My ritual for the marriage of death consists of some preparatory instructions,

praise for the bride, praise for the god, invocations of Aphrodite and death, the betrothal

of the candidate to the god, and her departure in a boat for an island where she is to carry

out the tasks of the middle phase of the initiation ritual. My inspirations include the

accounts of Psyche’s marriage from Apuleius, as included in the study by Erich Neumann

(1956) and in Till We Have Faces (1956) by C. S. Lewis. For the shore setting and the

description of death, I am indebted to the extraordinary play Metamorphoses

(Zimmerman, 2002), particularly its retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice using

Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem ―Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.‖ Locating the ritual at a lake or

river instead of the mountaintop used by Apuleius and Lewis allows a practical solution

to the need for the bride to be carried away by an outside force. Harding (1971) provided

a detailed amplification of the crescent moon as the boat of the moon goddess, a vessel

by which one might forge a new relationship to instinct by accepting it ―as a

manifestation of the creative life force‖ (p. 124). I envision the boat as pointed at both

ends, forming a vulva shape. The watery scene also suggests that the god might be a sea

monster, whose description I have drawn from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven

and Hell, as interpreted by June K. Singer (1970). Blake’s affinity for polarities and his

notion that ―except as man experiences God in his own life, God is incomprehensible to

him‖ (p. 163) echo the events that befall Psyche, for until she comes to know her own

divine Self within, she cannot reestablish a lasting relationship with Eros.

43

The Ritual of the Death Marriage

The bride of the god shall be accorded no less honor than the bride of a man;

indeed, even more honor shall she have in ornaments and attendants, so that the god

might know immediately the high esteem and love in which she is held. Her dress shall

be the white of innocence and of the shroud. The attendants, who need not be initiates,

shall be chosen by the bride and shall wear red. All shall cover their hair. The bride’s veil

shall be such that it can be drawn across her face for the approach to the god.

The celebrant shall be chosen by lot from the initiated members of the

community. A second lot shall be cast to choose the warden for the ceremony, who shall

be responsible for making all things ready and for directing the musicians and helpers.

The wedding shall take place beside a lake or river containing an island not far

from the shore. A small boat, tapering to a point at both bow and stern, shall be provided

for the crossing to the island. The warden shall arrange for rigging ropes and pulleys to

guide the boat to the island and back. The ceremony shall take place two weeks after the

bride’s most recent moon time and begin shortly before dusk so that it may conclude after

the sun has set.

44

All shall escort the bride from the place of preparation to the lake shore with

torches, flutes, drums, horns, rattles, and castanets.3 Virgins shall bear hyacinths,

4 and

others carry red roses, with thorns. No one shall enter the place of ceremony except with

bare feet, for the ritual takes place upon sacred ground.

In the text of the ceremony that follows, directions to participants are enclosed in

brackets.

Celebrant: We are gathered together to join this beautiful and worthy

woman with the god. Let us sing her praises.

All: O powerful god, behold here your bride—

Excellent, wise, and reknowned.5

Her great goodness shall never age.

No one spins or weaves wool as fine as she,

Yet her hands remain as soft as a lamb’s curls.

All children adore her.

Her good sense shows in her raiment

3 Torches and flutes are mentioned in Neumann (1956), the other four instruments

in Lewis (1956).

4 To symbolize a virgin’s loss of innocence, the Greek poet Sappho contrasted ―a

hyacinth crushed in the mountains / by shepherds; lying trampled on the earth / yet

blooming purple‖ (Barnstone, 1988, p. 77) with the sweet redness of an unpicked apple.

5 Fifth century B.C.E. grave markers for Athenian women depict such virtues as

these and sometimes show grieving parents (Burton, 2003).

45

And her jewels, selected for their beauty, not their cost.

As her mother leads the mourners,

Let us temper our grief with the bride’s joy—

She prepares to merge with the divine.

Celebrant: From the depths you call to her,

God of dark currents.

Accept a gift of wine poured upon your waters

As we sing your praises.

[Celebrant pours a libation of red wine into the lake.]

All: From the cataract of blood mixed with flame,6

Lift your fiery crest above the waves.

Show your eyes that glow with crimson fire.

Reveal your brow like a ridge of golden rocks,

Tiger-striped with green and purple,

Red gills flaring amid the scales.

Prepare your mouth for your lover’s kiss,

Your slashed tongue ready for her throat.

Roil the tempest of your passion.

Coil your body thrice to embrace her.

6 This description is quoted from the text of William Blake, ―The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell,‖ Plate 18, as cited in Singer (1970, p. 143) and from Plate 20.

46

Fiercely call her name in your own speech.

Helper: [Blows a conch shell or horn three times]

Celebrant: Woman, in the name of Aphrodite the beautiful,

Who rouses sweet desire among the immortals7

And subdues the tribes of deathly men

And birds that sport in the air

And all beasts and even the clans that the earth nurtures

And all in the sea,

Your fate is to dedicate your loveliness to the god

So that the fair Aphrodite may have no rival upon earth,

Nor even in heaven.

We name you virgin, untouchable, 8

Closed like a young flower at nightfall.

As a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness,

You will be filled with death beyond all fulfillment.

Deep within, you will find yourself heavy with child.

Speak now the words of betrothal.

7 Aphrodite’s praise is quoted from a Homeric hymn (Trzaskoma, Smith, &

Brunet, 2004, p. 202).

8 This description is quoted from Rainer Marie Rilke, ―Orpheus. Eurydice.

Hermes.‖ as cited in Zimmerman (2002, p. 46).

47

Bride: I hasten to behold the noble husband who awaits me,

The one born to destroy all the world,9

The most dreadful, the most beautiful,

The only dread and beauty there is.10

I vow my body as the Great Offering11

In tribute to the goddess whose very name is beauty.

Cry not for me. In this marriage,

I become at last worthy of divine honor.

Celebrant: Let all bless your marriage by casting flowers upon your path.

[Each participant walks between the bride and the boat and drops

a flower on the pathway. Family and close friends may have a final word

with the bride.]

Only those with divine sanction may approach the god. Be

thankful, therefore, that the goddess lends you her crescent boat that you

may enter the waters of death and not be engulfed by them.12

Step into its

embrace, and let it take you to your eternal husband.

9 Quoted from Neumann (1956, p. 8).

10 In Lewis (1956, p. 307), Oural uses these words to describe the coming of the

god after she is reunited with her sister Psyche.

11 Lewis (1956, p. 48) uses this term to describe the sacrifice of Psyche to the

goddess Ungit.

12As described in Harding (1971).

48

[The bride pulls her veil over her face, boldly walks the flower-

strewn path to the boat, and sits down in it. Although the thorns from the

roses are likely to prick her feet, she should not display any painful

reaction.]

Celebrant: Farewell forever, fairest maid.

Bride: Farewell forever.

Celebrant: Hail to Aphrodite and to Eros.

Hail to the unseen god who awaits you with splendor.

All: [As drums beat time, helpers pull the rope to guide the boat to the

island, where the next phase of the initiation ritual takes place.]

The Ritual Imagined

After writing the ritual, I recorded it and listened to it several times with eyes

closed to try to enter the scene in my imagination. What follows is a description of the

images and impressions that this experience aroused in me.

Few of us in our lifetime enjoy the kind of adulation that the bride heard about

herself. With a surprisingly strong boost from the praise she had absorbed, the bride’s

voice joined others in naming the terrible attributes of the god. At the mention of her

virginity being renewed, yet death waiting to fill her belly with child, the bride’s loins felt

strong spasms presaging new birth to come. I saw the mother of the initiate draw the veil

over her daughter’s face. As the bride entered the boat, she looked straight ahead at the

dark island, but as she passed the halfway point in her journey, she looked back at the

shore. A line of torches was ascending from the sand to the cliff above, a single light

remaining at the water’s edge to aid the helpers steadily drawing her toward her destiny.

49

The drums faded in the distance. Small waves tinkled against the boat’s sides. Arriving at

the island, she stepped out, the cool water offering a surprising welcome. Soft mud

squished between her toes as she walked, trembling, the few paces between the boat and

the cave-like gap in the foliage leading to her wedding bed.

50

References

Barnstone, W. (Trans.). (1988). Sappho and the Greek lyric poets. New York: Schocken

Books.

Burton, D. (2003). Public memorials, private virtues: Women on classical Athenian grave

monuments. Mortality, 8(1), 20–35. Retrieved August 10, 2008, from Humanities

International Complete database.

Doniger, W. (1998). The implied spider: Politics and theology in myth. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Harding, M. E. (1971). Woman’s mysteries: Ancient and modern. Boston: Shambhala.

Lewis, C. S. (1956). Till we have faces: A myth retold. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace.

Messervy, J. M. (1995). The inward garden: Creating a place of beauty and meaning.

Boston: Little, Brown.

Neumann, E. (1956). Amor and Psyche: The psychic development of the feminine.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Singer, J. K. (1970). The unholy bible: A psychological interpretation of William Blake.

New York: Harper & Row.

Trzaskoma, S. M., Smith, R. S., & Brunet, S. (Eds. & Trans.). (2004). Anthology of

classical myth: Primary sources in translation. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Turner, V. (1987). Betwixt and between: The liminal period in rites of passage. In L.C.

Mahdi, S. Foster, & M. Little (Eds.), Betwixt and between: Patterns of masculine

and feminine initiation (pp. 3–18). La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Whitmont, E.C. (1991). The symbolic quest: Basic concepts of analytical psychology

(Rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Zimmerman, M. (2002). Metamorphoses: A play. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University

Press.

Zimmerman, M. (Writer/Director). (2008, March 1). Argonautica [DVD]. Washington,

DC: Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive.

ARTIFACT 7: LITTLE MARLENE REDEEMED

A spiritual activist needs to be able to bridge the concrete and immaterial realms,

in order to temper the one-sidedness that Carl Jung (1916/1960) recognized as a

necessary consequence of the attention that civilized life requires one to direct toward

everyday matters. Keeping one foot in each world also honors the contributions that both

can make to reconciling seemingly intractable differences. This artifact, which was

written for the Archetypal Imagination: The Works of Joseph Campbell course, explores

the interaction between the material and the spiritual using Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm‘s

tale of ―The Juniper Tree‖ (Grimm & Grimm, 1857/1999).

A secondary goal was to experiment with a structure different from the customary

academic work. The paper contains a brief prose poem (―For, if a bird can carry a

twig. . . .‖) and begins with a personal recollection, not as an end in itself but as a tool for

opening the heart to reflection. A few weeks earlier, I had attended a writing symposium

at Pacifica that included a workshop with Dennis Slattery on ―Memory, Metaphor and the

Poiesis of Personal Myth.‖ Through various exercises, he helped us experience how the

process of recollection and writing allows an individual to make contact with personal

myth. Time and time again, producing a paper or engaging in a class discussion has

brought forth memories that had been long buried, through either avoidance or neglect,

and reconnected them with my emerging disposition as a spiritual activist, in tune with

the archetypal forces that influence us all.

52

Cultivating this degree of recollection and reconnection is not unlike the soul

retrieval process conducted by the contemporary shamans studied by anthropologist

Galina Lindquist (2004). According to Lindquist, after the shaman‘s journey to retrieve a

part of the patient‘s soul, the patient must approach the memories stirred up by the

shaman‘s journey and ask the soul part why it left and what can be done to ensure its

permanent reintegration. Personal memoir offers a similar opportunity to dialogue with

the past and recover one‘s own myth. Forgiveness also plays a role in this process,

according to Lindquist, retuning the emotions to lay the groundwork for reconciliation:

―The self is ‗for-given‘ (given back to itself, for itself)‖ and ―brought from the austerity

of then to the generosity of now‖ (Lindquist, 2004, p. 170). Experiencing such healing on

a personal level through shamanic soul retrieval or personal memoir offers hope that it

can also be accomplished on a larger scale in the context of contemporary society.

What I myself recovered in the course of writing the original paper and this

reflection is that literalism itself is an archetypal force, often acting under the guise of

materialism, and that it has played a large, sometimes even devouring role in my own

life. For example, I recalled a time in my 20s when I accepted a toxic living situation, one

that eventually led to my being beaten by my boyfriend, partially for the sake of having a

little more spending money.

Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the dead, spiritual mother and the consuming,

materialistic stepmother in ―The Juniper Tree‖ embodied my own ambivalence about and

alienation from the archetype of the Mother, perhaps precisely because that archetype has

both light and dark aspects that I find difficult to hold simultaneously. I can see in this

story, however, the path that may lead to reconciliation. Again, there is a connection with

53

the concept of soul retrieval, in this case, through what Marion Woodman (1982) has

described as the psyche‘s sighting of itself in matter: ―What happens is in some sense a

reciprocity in which conscious and unconscious, mind and matter, join to produce a third.

That third is the meeting of body and spirit bringing with it an act of joyous recognition‖

(p. 57). Paradoxically, acknowledgement of my own grasping for the material has taken

place at the same time that I have been allowing the body to reconnect with the

unconscious through the flow and balance of yoga, the quiet of meditation, and the active

attention of walks in the woods. Giving the soul a chance to escape its material shell and

return to it with gifts of joyous recognition, I hope for such a happy reunion of the

constituents of my psyche as takes place in ―The Juniper Tree‖ when the family is

reconstituted through the flight of a bird.

54

Little Marlene Redeemed: Finding Grace in the Concrete

To surrender our frail egos to the collective worship of concretized matter

is to succumb to the opacity of evil, impervious to the grace of Light.

Woodman, 1987, p. 221

Perhaps it was because I was barely 12 years old that my eighth grade algebra

teacher‘s request, ―Sue, toss me an eraser,‖ resounded with the specificity of a stage

direction. I sat next to the blackboard and obeyed immediately, picking up the eraser and

gently throwing it to him, watching as it traced a little dusty chalk trail in the air. Being a

football coach, he had no difficulty catching it, but he and the rest of the class showed by

the astonished looks on their faces that I had broken a taboo: I had thrown an object at a

teacher. That was the memorable day when I became acutely aware of the difference

between literal and metaphorical speech.

Notice the other distinction in this incident, between the literal and the concrete.

My teacher‘s request for an eraser involved a concrete object, but he did not want me

literally to toss it to him. The literal and the concrete are not so tightly coupled as our

senses might have us believe. Sacred stories need concrete images to make their meaning

come to life. As William Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ―Eternity is

in love with the productions of time‖ (as cited in Singer, 1970, p. 80). However, those

images appear in a context removed from clinical, that is, literal, observation. If the detail

is too sharp, the transformations central to the story will seem forced and jarring. If there

are not enough realistic elements, the story may be dismissed as mere fantasy. To evoke

the mysterium tremendum, the transcendent dimension of mortal human existence, the

tale must lie somewhere in the middle.

55

Campbell (1990) understood the crucial role of concrete objects in a story.

Drawing on Kantian logic, he explained the parallels between the observed effects of a

concrete object or action and the known effects of the ultimately unknowable, these

correspondences providing the truths found in myth. ―It is only by analogy,‖ Campbell

wrote, ―that we speak of Love or Reason, Unity, or even Being, as of God‖ (p. 71).

Dennis Slattery (2005) used the work of Carl Jung to reach the same conclusion and

proclaimed ―that to know mythically is to know by means of analogy‖ (¶ 42). The

concrete images of analogy give us access to the archetypes, those ―eternal symbols that

live in all the mythologies of the world‖ (Campbell, 2004, p. 18), those energy structures

of the psyche that are often recognized most readily in imaginal experiences.

Such analogies can lose their relevance—and thus their connection to archetypal

patterns—when the concrete images that form part of the equation are undermined by the

impulse to apply new knowledge and experience to those images in a literal fashion.

Campbell (1990) gave the example of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Assumption of

the Blessed Virgin. Without a system of earth-centered cosmological spheres through

which Mary‘s body can ascend, the analogy collapses into absurdity if we contemplate at

what fraction of the speed of light she might be moving or what star she may be passing

at any particular moment. What is required, Campbell suggested, is the transference of

the idea of ascension from the literal to a different plane, to that inhabited by one variety

of modern-day shaman, those scientists who fearlessly probe the boundaries of space and

time:

We must allow our own spirits to become, like theirs, wild ganders, and fly in

timeless, spaceless flight—like the body of the Virgin Mary—not into any fixed

heaven beyond the firmament (for there is no heaven out there), but to that seat of

experience, simultaneously without and within, where Prometheus and Zeus, I

56

and the Father, the meaninglessness of the sense of existence and the

meaninglessness of the meanings of the world, are one. (p. 192)

Campbell was not advocating an ascetic departure from the concrete world. Instead, he

posited that there is a realm, one of awe and wonder, where souls can fly, some in

dreams, some in shamanic trance, to heights of understanding beyond duality. Where is it

found? Campbell said that it lies in the individuality that has occupied a different place in

each phase of the evolving organization of human culture. According to Campbell,

individuality strengthened archaic hunter-gatherer bands, but was a potential source of

disruption for hieratic city-state societies in which each person functioned in a strictly

defined sphere within an orderly whole. Today, as structured, insular hierarchies give

way to awareness of the interdependence of humankind, such individuality—and the

imagination it fosters—is once again the source of our future human potential.

―The Juniper Tree‖

Against this background, what are we to make of the Brothers Grimm

(1857/1999) fairy tale ―The Juniper Tree,‖ in which a little girl literally knocks her

stepbrother‘s head off and ascension plays a transformative role? Here is a case where, as

Slattery (2005) wrote, ―a ferocious rush to literalism tends to fill the vacuum in the soul‖

(¶ 8) after imagination fails. This literalism becomes a calcifying force that threatens the

development of the individual.

The stepmother feels nothing but irritation at her stepson‘s behavior, always

getting in the way; she cannot visualize an intact family of four. All she can see is the

tangible prospect of getting the family fortune for her daughter. Obsessed with greed, the

stepmother decapitates her stepson under the pretext of getting him an apple and then

reconnects his head and neck with a kerchief. She tells her daughter to slap the boy when

57

he refuses to give her an apple. Little Marlene obeys and is horrified when his head flies

off. The mother boils up the boy for dinner, using the girl‘s tears as seasoning. The father

enjoys the stew, but is sad that the boy has gone to visit relatives without saying goodbye;

he believes the stepmother‘s explanation of his absence. Meanwhile, Little Marlene, still

weeping, carries the boy‘s bones outside in a silk cloth and lays them under the juniper

tree where his mother is buried. From sudden mist and flame, a beautiful bird appears. As

it flies away, Little Marlene feels lighthearted again.

When the bird returns, it carries a gold chain, a pair of red shoes, and a millstone,

all obtained from villagers in exchange for its song. The stepmother, still bound tightly by

her literalism, is the only one who hears in the bird‘s song the explicit details of her

murderous deed, and she trembles. The father and Little Marlene are drawn outdoors by

the sweet song, hearing only the melody not the lyrics, and they receive gifts of the chain

and shoes. When the stepmother goes out, the bird drops the millstone on her. Out of the

resulting smoke and flames steps the little boy, whole again. Hand-in-hand, he, Little

Marlene, and their father re-enter the house and sit down to eat.

Redemption from Literalism

This strange story recounts the dismembering and reconstitution not just of a boy

but of an entire family, to rid it of destructive literalism by reintroducing it to the world of

wonder and devotion. Marie-Louise von Franz (1980) warned against too strict a

psychological interpretation of fairy tales, because such stories contain a concentration of

archetypal material, rather than individual material that would lend itself to psychological

analysis. However, consider how the family unit seeks a wholeness analogous to the Self

58

and how Little Marlene‘s grief—and the fact that of all the characters in the story, only

she is named—exposes her character as more human than archetypal.

The marvelous bird leads Little Marlene away from the peril described by Edward

F. Edinger (1972) as materialism: ―The danger is to seek one‘s ultimate security in

physical well-being or literal, rigid ‗truth‘ rather than from a living contact with the

psychic center of being‖ (p. 149). James Hillman (1979) cited this same materialism as

one of the chief obstacles to using the images of dream, myth, and fantasy to deepen our

understanding of the soul, calling it a ―great mother‖ who ―is that modality of

consciousness which connects all psychic events to material ones, placing the images of

the soul in the service of physical tangibilities‖ (p. 69). Marian Woodman (1987) named

this force as the ―devouring mother‖ whose ―dark side is embodied in a materialism so

pervasive that matter itself, in all its infinite variety, is the divinity we serve‖ (p. 203).

Little Marlene‘s mother wholly embodies this materialistic maternal archetype. Her

awkwardness in the presence of her stepson develops into an obsession with getting the

family fortune for her daughter and finally into such hatred for the boy that the Grimms

(1857/1999) describe it as a devilish possession. Even though there is no external

authority in this story—no church, no hieratic state such as Campbell described—the

stepmother has internalized authority as an extreme tendency toward literalism. She is

totally in thrall to Hillman‘s physical tangibilities. She interprets all her stepson‘s actions

as literal threats to the material well-being of herself and her daughter, ignoring and

negating any other meaning they might have, because she no longer recognizes

individuals as anything other than means to her materialistic ends.

59

Little Marlene is in danger of following in her mother‘s footsteps. Already, she

too easily obeys the suggestion to slap her stepbrother. What redeems Little Marlene

from this materialistic literalism is contact with the miraculous bird and the concrete

objects that it uses to complete its mission. Like the white stones that Hansel drops to

guide himself and Gretel back home from the forest, the objects carried by the bird lead

Little Marlene beyond the literal—and the limits it places on the possible—into a

moment of pure being.

For, if a bird can carry a twig to build a nest, why not a gold chain?

And, if a bird can carry a gold chain, why not a pair of shoes?

If a bird can carry a pair of shoes, why not a millstone?

And if a bird can carry a millstone, then why can‘t a decapitated boy live again?

Bam! In the moment when the millstone crashes into the stepmother and the boy

reappears, Little Marlene experiences what Campbell (1990) called ―a sense of existence:

a moment of unevaluated, unimpeded, lyric life—antecedent to both thought and feeling‖

(p. 186). The millstone‘s weight cracks open her ordinary reality to expose fully the

transcendent experience that was prefigured by the first appearance of the beautiful bird,

an event that temporarily lifted Little Marlene‘s thoughts out of their grief and

symbolized the need for her own spirit to take wing. The fallen stone not only shatters the

bones of the materialistic stepmother, but it also stirs up the dust from the grave of the

boy‘s devoted birth mother. The particles of the two mothers mingle in the light of the

flames until the fire and the bird both disappear, leaving only the resurrected boy, gazing

at his astonished father and stepsister.

60

When the boy takes them by the hand, the family unit is whole again, but on a

new plane, having absorbed the transmuted essence of the two mothers. The

transformation of the fractured family of four into an intact unit of three is symbolic of

the new psychological state in which Little Marlene finds herself, fully differentiated

from her mother and thus taking her first steps on the journey toward individuation. She

has learned what can happen when the bonds of literalism are loosened so that the

transcendent can break into the secular sphere. She also has seen how a concrete object

can be the instrument that gives wing to the miraculous, for it was her best silk kerchief

that veiled the boy‘s bones as they transformed into those of a bird and set her

redemption in motion. Without her tender act, the story would have ended with the boy‘s

death. As von Franz (1980) has explained, lifting a fairy-tale curse requires a change in

perspective, from a prejudiced or narrow stance to a broader view, facilitated by

affection: ―A change in the conscious attitude has always to be worked out first by a

human effort and with human devotion‖ (p. 63). Because Little Marlene cherished her

brother‘s bones as more than mere objects, they—and she—became transparent to the

grace of Light.

61

References

Campbell, J. (1990). Flight of the wild gander. New York: HarperPerennial.

Campbell, J. (2004). Pathways to bliss. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Edinger, E. F. (1972). Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the

psyche. New York: Penguin Books.

Franz, M.-L. von (1980). The psychological meaning of redemption motifs in fairy tales.

Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.

Grimm, J., & Grimm, W. (1999). The juniper tree. In M. Tatar (Ed. & Trans.), The

classic fairy tales, pp. 190–197. New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work

published 1857)

Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: HarperPerennial.

Jung, C. G. (1960). The transcendent function. In R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), The collected

works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, pp. 67–91). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press. (Original work published 1916)

Lindquist, G. (2004, Summer). Bringing the soul back to the self: Soul retrieval in neo-

shamanism. Social Analysis, 48(2), 157–173. Retrieved January 1, 2009, from

Academic Search Premier database.

Singer, J. K. (1970). The unholy bible: A psychological interpretation of William Blake.

New York: Harper & Row.

Slattery, D. (2005, August). Parallel poetics and the energy of metaphor. Mythic

Passages. Retrieved January 1, 2009, from http://www.mythicjourneys.org/

newsletter_aug05_slattery.html

Woodman, M. (1982). Addiction to perfection: The still unravished bride. Toronto,

Canada: Inner City Books.

Woodman, M. (1987). From concrete to consciousness: The emergence of the feminine.

In L. C. Mahdi, S. Foster, & M. Little (Eds.), Betwixt and between: Patterns of

masculine and feminine initiation (pp. 201–222). La Salle, IL: Open Court.

SECTION 3: PUBLIC WITNESS

Figure 7: Mandala. Source: Author.

ARTIFACT 8: A LETTER TO THE EDITOR .................................................................63

ARTIFACT 9: A SERMON ON RITUAL ........................................................................66

ARTIFACT 10: PLACE KEEPERS WORKBOOK .........................................................77

ARTIFACT 11: A LITANY OF INJUSTICE ...................................................................92

ARTIFACT 12: TRACING THE TRUTH ........................................................................98

ARTIFACT 8: A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

This artifact is a statement of witness delivered in the form of a letter to the editor,

which is included here in its entirety, just as it was published in The Washington Post

(Mosher, 2008). What inspired me to write was an emotionally charged symbol and my

perception that the way it was being used could potentially distort the issue of “the

illusion of endless abundance” (DeBord, 2008, ¶ 12) and whether it required large cars as

its symbolic expression. I tried to respond with a non-confrontational approach—

acknowledging the reality of the values being spotlighted while offering an alternative

interpretation. My letter suggested that an existing symbol (the Hummer) be set aside in

favor of new symbols (fuel-efficient cars) that better represent changing attitudes toward

energy and the environment.

The adoption of a new shared symbol—whether it be an image, a song, a slogan,

or some other representation—can be an important indicator that a period of conflict is

moving toward some resolution. It can also contribute to that resolution by helping those

in opposition focus on their shared values and aspirations. I have learned to be more

sensitive to the symbolism surrounding an issue and to allow potent symbols to stimulate

my own recognition of injustice. When I am so moved, the work done in Leadership

Skills for Social Justice and other courses has given me confidence that I can speak and

write effectively in public forums such as the editorial pages.

64

A Renewable Pride

In his July 12 op-ed, “Hummer, How We Need Thee,” Matthew DeBord (2008)

wrote, “For American life to work, the illusion of endless abundance must be

maintained” (¶ 12). He mistook a symbol of American optimism (the Hummer) for that

positive outlook itself.

This country’s optimistic spirit is rooted in a different kind of abundance—not a

false one of unlimited resources but the reality of boundless inventiveness, curiosity, and

drive.

As the American dream evolves away from the failed premise of unlimited

growth toward a scenario that takes its cue from nature’s process of constant renewal,

there is no reason that General Motors and other manufacturers cannot still produce

vehicles “crammed with emotional content” (DeBord, 2008, ¶ 13)—engineering new

vehicles that are not only fuel-efficient but that also rely more on renewable and

recyclable materials, creating a good ride for American pride.

65

References

DeBord, M. (2008, July 12). Hummer, how we need thee. The Washington Post, p. A13.

Mosher, S. (2008, July 19). A renewable pride [Letter to the editor]. The Washington

Post, p. A14.

ARTIFACT 9: A SERMON ON RITUAL

This artifact was a pure gift from the unconscious, received and relayed with great

joy. As a lay deacon and liturgist in my spiritual community, a liberal Christian church in

Washington, DC, I have had the opportunity to lead worship and also to preach

occasionally on such subjects as hospitality, symbols, and the inner refuge. As I

completed my final project for the Ritual, Initiation, and Ceremony course—a house

farewell ritual for my parents—I volunteered to share from the pulpit some of what I had

learned in that class about ritual. The timing for the subject was opportune, for the

congregation had just completed the difficult process of revising the ―Declaration of

Faith‖ recited during the Sunday worship service, an effort that I had shepherded for

nearly two years. As I conferred with the other people involved in planning the service

during which I would preach, I asked for their help in making it a more physical

experience. Ritual involves mind, body, and voice, I told them, but our worship usually

was big on mind, mid-range on voice, and skimpy on bodily involvement.

Two weeks before the sermon date, I awoke after no more than an hour or two of

sleep with a complete vision of the entire sermon and its acorn-exchange ritual. Page

after page of text and ritual directions effortlessly streamed into my notebook. Later, I

only needed to enrich certain points with examples and quotations. Rarely had I felt so

fully a vessel for something beyond my conscious mind.

The sermon, included here in the exact form in which it was delivered to the

congregation, was well received, and I cherish its presentation as a threshold moment in

67

my development as a spiritual activist. Not only was I bearing witness to what I had been

studying at Pacifica, but I was transmuting those teachings into practical wisdom that

could perhaps plant seeds of greater awareness in others’ daily lives. Adding to the

initiatory feel of the event was the presence in the pews of a Pacifica classmate, a peer

going through the same process that I was, and an elder, Polly Agee, who had helped put

me on the road to Pacifica. I had consulted Polly as a life coach, and she had written one

of my admission recommendations.

Little did I know that day would be our last meeting, for Polly would suddenly

pass away a few months later at age 61, leaving behind the gratitude of a generation of

fundraisers for advocacy organizations and political campaigns who had learned their

trade from her in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though I was a product of her retirement

career as a life coach, her death brought home the fact that I was taking my place in an

unbroken line of activists who had been influenced by Polly’s discipline, enthusiasm,

generosity, and authenticity. She believed strongly in personal destiny and taught me to

seek beyond the why of my existence in order to discover a cause about which I could be

passionate and a calling that would draw out my best skills to serve that cause.

Even though I am still waiting for that cause and calling to become apparent, I am

confident that when I am ready, I will know—just as surely as I knew what to say and do

for my sermon on ritual. As Robert A. Johnson (1991) wrote, ―Paradox is brought to its

next stage of development by a highly conscious waiting. The ego can do no more; it

must wait for that which is greater than itself‖ (p. 93). Such waiting is less difficult when

one has felt at least once the outpouring of the unconscious.

68

Ritual 101: Dry Bones

Our role in ritual is to be human. We take the initiative to spark a process,

knowing that its success is not in our hands but in the hands of the kind of forces

we invoke into our lives. So the force field we create within a ritual is something

coming from the spirit, not something coming from us. We are only instruments

in this kind of interaction between dimensions, between realms.

Somé, 1993, p.32

Of all the objects that function as symbols in our lives, none may be more potent

than the home. When you take a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers to a house-warming

or a dinner party, you may be responding to an ancient urge to make an offering to the

household gods or to pour a libation to the spirits that hallow a space. Thus, when my

parents announced that they were moving in January to a senior community, leaving

behind the house of my childhood, I wondered if we could honor their transition with a

ceremony that would help the whole family celebrate what their house has meant to all of

us, make sure that nothing important was left behind, and release the house to be a home

for its next owner. But more than a ceremony, I wanted a ritual that could expose—as

playwright Patricia Montley (2005) suggests—the ―truth that transcends logic and

surpasses reason‖ (p. xiii). And so we gathered after our Christmas dinner, three

generations, to sing, to share stories, and to harvest for my parents all those memories and

feelings that the movers could not pack into boxes. Seeing how much that meant to my

parents, to my brother, and even to our college-age daughters inspired me to speak to you

today about ritual and what it can mean to us, as individuals and as churchgoers.

Ritual is a word we tend to tiptoe around. When I mentioned my interest in ritual

to some friends in the computer business, their response was to ask whether that meant

wearing weird clothes or skulking around in the woods. Even in church circles, we cloak

ritual in a technical term, liturgy, as if it needs to be shielded from its ancient roots, for

69

ritual is perhaps as old as the idea of humans gathering around a fire, shoulder-to-

shoulder against the cold, sharing stories. To my mind, ritual is a word ripe for

reclaiming, for rescuing from its descent into phrases like empty ritual and ritual killing,

and this pre-Easter season is a perfect time to do so. In the early church, the weeks of

Lent comprised a period of training, testing, and edification for candidates hoping to

undergo initiation into the Christian mysteries by being baptized during the Easter vigil.

Our Lenten observances here at Universalist National Memorial Church are bracketed by

our two most complex worship rituals of the year—those for Ash Wednesday and

Maundy Thursday.

Malidoma Somé (1993), the African shaman we heard from in our second

reading, suspected that ―in the absence of ritual, the soul runs out of its real nourishment‖

(p. 97). ―A person’s life is ritualized,‖ he said, ―who accepts that the fact that everything

that he or she does is the work of the hands of the Divine‖ (p. 98). Ritual can start

enhancing our lives when we simply acknowledge that we can’t do it all ourselves. That

can include the moment when you notice that spring is starting to push green shoots

skyward and you whisper a word of thanks under your breath. One of the key functions

that ritual can fulfill is to reconnect us with nature, so that we remember, to paraphrase

Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard (2003), that nature is a divine creation, every part of

it sacred, and as full of hidden wisdom as we ourselves are.

I had thought about exploring with you some of the technical information I’ve

learned in my study of ritual—the functions it serves, its usual structure—but I was

blessed with a vision of a better way to share my understanding—by doing a ritual

together. I’d like to ask Lisa and Paul to take the baskets that are on the altar and pass

70

them among you. The baskets contain acorns. Please take one and hold onto it. Feel free

to pass if you don’t want to participate. Once everyone has an acorn, I’ll tell you what to

do next.

[Wait for acorns to be distributed]

Now, find a neighbor there in the pews, and exchange acorns with that other

person. Stand up if you need to reach closer. And it’s OK to trade with more than one

person. When you’re done, sit down again.

[Wait for acorns to be exchanged]

So, how did that feel? Do you feel a little silly sitting there with an acorn in your

hand, not knowing what it’s all about? That’s OK. I wanted you to feel a certain gap

between the performance of the ritual and your understanding of it. We’ll connect the two

in a few minutes, but now you have a concrete illustration of some of the factors that hold

us back from enriching our lives with the power that ritual has to heal, to celebrate, and to

foster a sense of belonging. I find that there are four impediments:

We are sometimes confused about the differences between habit, ceremony, and

ritual.

We don’t always understand the intent of a ritual.

We find it hard to make sacred space.

When it comes right down to it, we may be anxious that a ritual might actually

work.

To help you distinguish among habit, ceremony, and ritual, think about walking

through a room in your house. When you walk through that room and hardly notice the

furniture or decorations, that’s habit. If you walk through the room and pause to take in

71

its furnishings and maybe even straighten a picture, that’s ceremony. But if, as you

appreciate the furnishings, you also are mindful of the meanings behind the

knickknacks—what they represent about yourself and your family—that’s where ritual

begins, in that invocation of a different level of awareness, one that looks beyond the

concrete and the everyday.

The second obstacle to incorporating ritual into our lives is uncertainty about its

intent. In traditional societies, like the African village where Malidoma Somé grew up,

everyone knows the purpose behind each ritual. That’s not the case in modern societies,

though, and so it is up to whoever conducts the ritual to make the intention clear. This

applies even if only one person is involved—you—and you are creating a ritual for

yourself. Somé (1993) explained that ritual can serve three basic functions: It can provide

healing or bring balance, it can be the vehicle for celebration, and it can prevent

something undesirable from happening or rehearse something good that we want to take

place. You can turn your morning cup of coffee or tea into an effective personal ritual, for

example, if you drink it with intention—mindful of what you need to accomplish that day

and with an invocation asking for whatever assistance you might seek from your

coworkers, your family, or from God. The invocation is a critical part of any ritual, even

if it is just a brief unspoken thought, for it engages the unseen for the benefit of the

visible and opens you up to the transformation that is the real inner work of ritual.

Let’s do a little check-in: How’s that acorn doing? Still holding onto it?

Now for the third obstacle to effective ritual—finding sacred space can be tough

these days. The late Gerald May (1999), who taught at the Shalem Institute in Maryland,

wrote that our tendency to ―always be filling up our spaces‖ is ―an addiction of the first

72

order‖ (p. 44), but that unpleasant words like emptiness, yearning, and incompleteness

―hold a hope for incomprehensible beauty‖ (p. 48). As lovely as this sanctuary is, it is

nothing compared to the sacred space in your heart, if you only make room. A little

silence and wonder can go a long way. Scoop up some water from a city fountain or a

woodland spring, and just marvel at it for a moment. Your heart can remember how to

make sacred space.

Of course, a physical space is helpful, too, and that’s why we are so fortunate to

gather in this beautiful building. We enter it with an expectation of inner change and

might even reinforce that intention by lighting a candle at the side chapel altar. When the

service is over, we carry that change out with us, reconnecting with the ordinary world in

hope of transforming it, too. That’s the core of ritual. To touch that essence in daily

practice, many find it helpful to set aside sacred space in their homes or on their office

desks with a few objects that provide a reminder to pause for mindfulness, for intention,

for a moment of transformation. Christina Baldwin (1998), who has taught thousands the

ritual of gathering in circle for council and mutual support, described a human resources

manager who put a candle on her desk and lit it every time someone came by for an

important conversation. After a while, she found that her office visitors would take the

initiative and light the candle themselves to signal that they wanted her full attention.

The last obstacle to embracing ritual is that we tend to ignore the possibility that it

might actually be effective! Better we should heed Annie Dillard’s (1982) warning, when

she wrote:

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? . . .

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be

wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they

should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take

73

offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

(pp. 52–53)

But this is why we need ritual, because it provides a safe container for what might

otherwise be unbearable, where one can say or think what might otherwise be

unspeakable. What ritual asks of us in return is that we act as if we believe the ritual will

work. This is what creates the force field that Malidoma Somé described in our reading, a

field coming from the Spirit, but held by human longing. Acting as if we believe in the

effectiveness of the ritual forges a partnership with the powers we invoke, recognizing

that we cannot bring about transformation by ourselves. Jesus can be our guide here, as in

so many areas, for he taught about ritual not by preaching a sermon on the subject, but by

demonstrating this as if principle, which we have come to call faith. When Jesus put clay

on the eyes of a blind man and had him wash in the pool of Siloam (John 9:1–7), that

man acted as if he thought the ritual would be effective, and he was healed.

The intentions that we bring to ritual, no matter how well meant, are like only so

many dry bones (Ezekiel 37:4) until the Spirit breathes life into them through our faith.

So, let’s get back to that acorn. What role does it play in our little ritual experiment?

What as if can it capture for us? Let’s for a moment consider that this acorn is your soul,

your destiny, the seed-core that can grow into whatever you are meant to be. Psychologist

James Hillman (1996) used the term acorn theory for his idea that each person is seeded

at birth with a calling that not only determines, but also guides that individual’s destiny,

just as an acorn contains in it everything needed to produce an oak tree. Hold your acorn

gently, lovingly in your palm, and breathe on it three times. Breathe into it your hopes.

Breathe into it your dreams. Breathe into it the gifts that you want to share with the

world.

74

Now, think on the golden rule that Jesus taught, ―Love your neighbor as yourself‖

(Matthew 22:39), and understand the intent of this ritual. Our souls depend on the love

not just of those we know best, including those nearest us in the pews, but also on the

care of others whose influence on our lives may seem tenuous at best. So, again find a

neighbor to exchange your acorn with, casting that acorn into the care of another, even

into the hands of a stranger. You might want to ask in your own words for your neighbor

to care for your acorn.

[Wait for exchanges to finish]

Now, understanding the meaning behind this second part of our ritual experiment,

consider how that feels compared with the exchange we did earlier. By acting as if these

acorns hold our seed-souls, we are now joined together in mutual caring. You may even

be thinking about what you want to do to honor the trust symbolized by receiving the

acorn; you could place it on a home altar, plant it in the woods, or keep it warm in your

pocket.

Our minister emeritus, Bill Fox (1997), once preached a sermon on the

Declaration of Faith in which he declared that ―what we say here . . . is . . . a believable

ambiguity that holds us together in a mystery‖ (p. 13). I believe that not just what we say

here, but also what we do here—the worship ritual we share within these walls—

embodies that same believable, mysterious ambiguity. Behold the mystery we celebrate,

in a nutshell as it were: We are all called as children of God; thus, each reflects God in

some way. Who is to say whether a nod from someone you hardly know might be the

divine gesture that sets your life’s journey on its proper course? For the person whose

acorn you’re now holding, this visit to church today may have been made in sorrow, in

75

fatigue, or in anxiety, seeking comforting words. Or it may have provided the only touch

of a human hand that person will feel this week. Even without an acorn to carry the

meaning for us, the ritual that is worship binds this community together in the assurance

that all are cared for and all can be transformed through the invisible forces that we

welcome in ritual to do their holy work.

76

References

Baldwin, C. (1998). Calling the circle: The first and future culture. New York: Bantam

Books.

Dillard, A. (1982). Teaching a stone to talk: Expeditions and encounters. New York:

HarperPerennial.

Fox, W. L. (1997). What we say here. Washington, DC: Universalist National Memorial

Church.

Hillman, J. (1996). The soul’s code: In search of character and calling. New York:

Warner Books.

Johnson, Robert A. (1991). Owning your own shadow: Understanding the dark side of

the psyche. New York: HarperSanFrancisco.

May, G. (1999). Entering the emptiness. In M. Schut (Ed.), Simpler living, compassionate

life: A Christian perspective (pp. 41–51). Denver, CO: Living the Good News.

Montley, P. (2005). In nature’s honor: Myths and rituals celebrating the Earth. Boston:

Skinner House Books.

Sherrard, P. (2003). The desanctification of nature. In B. McDonald (Ed.), Seeing God

everywhere: Essays on nature and the sacred (pp. 109–130). Bloomington, IN:

World Wisdom.

Somé, M. P. (1993). Ritual: Power, healing, and community. New York: Penguin

Compass.

ARTIFACT 10: PLACE KEEPERS WORKBOOK

Each culture brings very different ways of imagining their relationship to

nature, and reconciliation between cultures also involves, in fact forces, a

profound re-imagining, a reconciliation with nature. In nearly every case

of reconciliation that I’ve come across, questions of the ―land,‖ of place,

are inextricably part of it.

Bishop, 2006, p. 46

As a teenager in Atlanta in the 1960s, my first encounter with spiritual activism

was related to the nascent environmental movement, not the civil rights and anti-war

movements that were generating bigger headlines. My mother, herself a lifelong

conservationist, introduced me to several Quakers who were committed to cleaning up

the air and water. Under their influence and hers, I participated in the first Earth Day in

1970 and established a lasting sensitivity to environmental issues. In this artifact, I

reconnected with those interests to produce a citizen workbook with three primary goals:

to increase awareness of green space and its uses, benefits, and costs; to increase

understanding of the green space decision-making process that takes place at the

community level; and to promote a sense of appreciation for green space and community

ownership of green space issues. My hope is that civic and environmental groups and

parks departments can use this workbook to teach citizens how to ―read‖ the green space

around them and get involved in green space issues. As landscape architect Elizabeth K.

Meyer (2008) wrote in her manifesto on the importance of aesthetics to environmental

sustainability,

Through the experience of different types of beauty we come to notice, to

care, and to deliberate about our place in the world. . . . These

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participatory experiences not only break down the barriers between

subject and object; they change us, and, at times, have the capacity to

challenge us, to prod us to act. (p. 120)

Noticing green space is a necessary first step toward taking action to preserve it.

A secondary objective for this project was to go beyond the written word as a

medium and introduce a stronger visual element into my work. I often have viewed

myself as ―graphically impaired‖ and almost always have contracted out any design work

required for my professional projects. A few years ago, I completed a certificate program

in woody landscape plants at George Washington University but chose not to continue on

to the landscape design program, because I felt that I lacked the necessary visualization

and illustration skills. However, I have traveled widely with my camera and, as early as

the Portfolio I class during the second quarter at Pacifica, began seeing my own

photographs as potential illustrations of the ideas that I was so accustomed to expressing

only with words.

The overall tone of the artifact takes its cue from the first word in the name of the

course for which it was produced, Education for Ecological Stewardship. I wanted to

generate a workbook that would be instructive and stimulate the reader to actively

participate in creating or maintaining local green spaces. One fundamental assumption

was that, if people could learn to appreciate the particular details of at least one space that

already exists in their community—to understand why it feeds the soul—they would want

to preserve it and would be inspired to help develop other such places.

I also agree with Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble (1994), Julie Moir

Meservy (1995), and Mitchell Thomashow (1995) that childhood memories of place

remain active in the psyche and color an individual’s relationship to the environment.

Richard Louv (2007), instigator of the No Child Left Inside movement, has written:

79

We do know that when people talk about the disconnect between children

and nature—if they are old enough to remember a time when outdoor play

was the norm—they almost always tell stories about their own childhoods:

this tree house or fort, that special woods or ditch or creek or meadow.

They recall those ―places of initiation,‖ in the words of naturalist Bob

Pyle, where they may have first sensed with awe and wonder the largeness

of the world seen and unseen. When people share these stories, their

cultural, political, and religious walls come tumbling down. (¶ 8)

Helping people become articulate in the personal language of place could, therefore,

contribute to reconciliation efforts in many other arenas, as Peter Bishop (2006) observed

in the quotation that began this reflection.

The challenge was to use just a few pages to cover the practical aspects of

recognizing public green space, while at the same time raising awareness of issues of

inclusion, sustainability, and aesthetics, which I feel are crucial to a holistic approach to

green space. I read dozens of articles, books, and Web sites and even considered at one

point that an annotated bibliography might be a more feasible project design. Persistence

paid off, however, and I consider the workbook to be one of the most satisfying projects

that I have ever completed, both for its content and in its visual appeal.

Its personal impact has reached well beyond the course assignment. I have

initiated conversations with organizations and practitioners who hold similar values. I

also plan to make the workbook available online for free, unrestricted use at

http://www.placekeepers.org, a new domain that I have acquired and may develop as a

Web platform to support my continuing efforts to help people cultivate their ecological

identity, to use Mitchell Thomashow’s (1995) term—awareness of their place in the

interdependent web that links all life with the natural world.

80

Text with footnote for Kari McGinnis quote1

Note: Quotation from McGinnis, 2001, ¶ 8. Except as noted, all images are by author.

81

Footnote for harper quotation2

Note: Quotation from Harper, 1995, p. 184.

82

83

Footnote for Louv quote3

Note: Quotation from Louv, 2007, ¶ 34.

84

Footnote for Nabhan quote4

Note: Quotation from Nabhan, 1994, p. 3.

85

Footnote for Beatley & Mannign quote5

Note: Quotation from Beatley and Manning, 1994, p. 174.

86

Footnote for Messervy quote6

Note: Quotation from Messervy, 2007.

87

Footnote for Daniels & Lapping quotation7

Note: Quotation from Daniels and Lapping, 2005, pp. 325–326.

88

Use this text to add any footnote marker.

89

90

Footnote for Durning quote8

Note: Quotation from Durning, 1995, pp. 74–75.

91

References

Beatley, T., & Manning, K. (1997). The ecology of place: Planning for environment,

economy, and community. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Bishop, P. (2006, Fall). Reconciliation & regeneration: Building bridges for wounded

cultures & wounded earth. Spring, 76, pp. 41–57.

Daniels, T., & Lapping, M. (2005, February). Land preservation: An essential ingredient

in smart growth [Electronic version]. Journal of Planning Literature, 19(3), 316–

329. Retrieved December 8, 2008, from

http://www.privatelandownernetwork.org/plnlo/daniels_land_preservation.pdf

Durning, A. T. (1995). Are we happy yet? In T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes, & A. D. Kanner

(Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind, pp. 68–76. San

Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Harper, S. (1995). The way of wilderness. In T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes, & A. D. Kanner

(Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind, pp. 183–200. San

Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Louv, R. (2007, March/April). Leave no child inside [Electronic version]. Orion.

Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/

articles/article/240

McGinnis, K. (2001, Summer). Great commons of the world [Electronic version]. YES!

Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.yesmagazine.org/

article.asp?ID=436

Messervy, J. M. (1995). The inward garden: Creating a place of beauty and meaning.

Boston: Little, Brown.

Messervy, J. M. (2007, September 27). Unpublished lecture given at Carnegie Institute,

Washington, DC.

Meyer, E. K. (2008, October). Sustaining beauty: The performance of appearance.

Landscape Architecture, 98, 92–131.

Nabhan, G. P. (1994). A child’s sense of wildness. In G. P. Nabban & Stephen Trimble,

The geography of childhood: Why children need wild places, pp. 1–14. Boston:

Beacon Press.

Nabhan, G. P., & Trimble, S. (1994). The geography of childhood: Why children need

wild places. Boston: Beacon Press.

Thomashow, Mitchell. (1995). Ecological identity: Becoming a reflective

environmentalist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ARTIFACT 10: A LITANY OF INJUSTICE

In this world created by the Self we meet all those many to whom we belong,

whose hearts we touch; here ―there is no distance, but immediate presence.‖

von Franz, 1978/1995, p. 177

When I entered Pacifica, my political consciousness could be characterized as

―aware but uninvolved‖ (Andreatta, 2006, p. 212). I believed that individuals could affect

society, but I had insufficient confidence in my own opinions to put myself on the line to

take action. Also, I had spent 15 years working for a news organization where active

political involvement was forbidden, because it would have raised questions of conflict of

interest. As a result, any activist energy that I had when I was younger was largely

suppressed for a long time.

The Leadership Skills for Social Justice course helped rekindle that spark of

involvement by focusing more on privilege than blame and redress and by providing

more nuanced, less loaded language for talking about oppression. In particular, Iris

Marion Young’s article, ―Five Faces of Oppression‖ (2000) broke down an

overwhelming concept into five interrelated conditions: exploitation, marginalization,

powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. In December 2007, as I listened to

Christmas music in the background, I recalled the prayer that asks for forgiveness for

―what I have done and what I have failed to do‖ (Bunson, 2001, p. 313) and was inspired

to write the artifact that follows, a litany of sins of commission and omission and of

injustices received. I grasped that I had been involved in—and in some cases, continued

93

to sustain—every one of the five aspects of oppression. My consideration of injustice

shifted from seeking cause and solution to a subtler, yet deeper and more humble

recognition of my own participation and privilege, making it possible to listen with

greater appreciation for others’ yearning for justice and wholeness.

I have shared this litany with others (see Artifact 12 in this portfolio) and watched

it draw their attention to the unavoidable, daily injustices that we each perpetuate. In the

future, I would like to develop a workshop that challenges participants to develop their

own litanies of injustice as a tool for closing the distance that divides them from those

who suffer from oppression.

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A Litany of Injustice

I offer this litany of sins of commission and omission and of injustices received.

When I wear clothes made by or eat food grown by people I do not know, I

participate in exploitation, for I benefit from their labor with no knowledge of their

working conditions or pay.

When I have moved because of my husband’s job, I have experienced

exploitation, for I have given up my work to allow him to pursue his career.

When I left a job, it was partly because of powerlessness, because I was stuck in a

position whose responsibilities I could escape only by quitting. I also experienced

exploitation, for I felt that more child care was needed at home and I was the one who

should provide it.

When I pass someone in the street whose color or clothes are different from mine

and I do not acknowledge them with a glance or a ―Hello,‖ I participate in

marginalization, for I pretend they do not exist.

When I spend money other than for necessities, I participate in exploitation as my

ease and comfort come at the cost of someone else’s work and the money I spend is not

distributed in the cause of justice.

When I neglect to stay in contact with elderly friends, I participate in

marginalization, increasing their sense of isolation.

When I have been at the office or at church and have done work myself instead of

sharing it, I have participated in powerlessness in not allowing others to develop their

own capacities.

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When I criticize a hymn as not appropriate to our church culture, I participate in

cultural imperialism, because I do not allow other voices, different from mine, to share

their faith experience.

When I was hit in the face by an alcoholic boyfriend and did not seek shelter, I

participated in violence, both as a victim and as a silent witness.

When I listen without objection to hateful speech directed at a group, I participate

in violence, for I allow seeds of angry prejudice and hatred to take root.

When I have watched an elderly, African woman walk past my house daily and

have not stepped out to greet her, I have participated in marginalization by allowing her

presence in my neighborhood to go unhonored.

When I do not remember the names of my senior citizen neighbors, I participate

in marginalization, because they barely exist for me.

When I grow short-tempered with a clerk in a store or a telephone caller whose

words I do not understand because English is not their first language, I participate in

powerlessness due to the lack of respect I show and in violence because my anger may

fuel another customer’s hatred.

When I stay home rather than rally for a living wage, affordable housing, or other

efforts at redistribution in the cause of justice, I participate in exploitation in that I benefit

from the work of those who do not receive just compensation and in marginalization

because I perpetuate their dependence.

When I tell a story from another country or group without asking permission or

studying its meaning in context, I participate in cultural imperialism, seeing their story

only through the lens of my own preferences and prejudices.

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When I withhold my attention, my money, and my time from the political process,

I perpetuate all forms of oppression by not supporting those who are engaged in the

struggle for justice.

May God’s light and peace inspire me to greater awareness and generosity in the

service of those whom I should rightly thank for the privileges I enjoy.

97

References

Andreatta, B. (2006). Navigating the research university: A guide for first-year students.

Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.

Bunson, M. (2001). The Catholic almanac’s guide to the church. Huntington, IN: Our

Sunday Visitor.

Franz, M.-L. von (1995). Projection and recollection in Jungian psychology: Reflections

of the soul (W. H. Kennedy, Trans.). Peru, IL: Open Court. (Original work

published 1978)

Young, I. M. (2000). Five faces of oppression. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, R.

Casteñada, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zúñiga (Eds.), Readings for

diversity and social justice (pp. 35–49). New York: Routledge.

ARTIFACT 12: TRACING THE TRUTH

The project assignment for the Models of National Transformation course

paralyzed me at first. I had to conduct a truth and reconciliation process in my own

community, drawing on the principles embodied in South Africa’s Truth and

Reconciliation Commission. The class readings stirred up a long list of situations where I

have been a bystander or where I felt guilty or unreconciled with an oppressed group. But

who was I to think that I could inject myself into any of those very serious situations? I

could not jump into some conflict as the reconciler riding to the rescue. Fortunately, that

was not what the assignment called for. As Professor Maren Hansen explained in a

conference call (personal communication, September 25, 2008), we were being guided as

much toward awareness as toward action: We were to notice the alienation in our own

lives, see how our own fears contribute to alienation, and use personal relationships as a

means to try to bridge that alienation, applying principles gained from our study of the

Truth Commission.

I kept coming back to two issues that made me particularly uneasy. One was that I

had never been able to bring myself to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum, despite having lived in the Washington, DC, area since the museum opened in

1993. The other was a film I had watched on television a few months earlier—Traces of

the Trade (2008), a documentary about members of a major slave-trading family in

Rhode Island facing the facts of their family’s involvement. I was not aware of any slave-

owning or -trading ancestors in my own family tree when I wrote this paper (although I

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did learn of some later from a cousin who expressed interest in my study of

reconciliation). My great-grandfather, a farmer from Alabama, fought on the side of the

South in the Civil War. Certainly, as members of a number of privileged groups, both I

and my ancestors have benefitted from slave labor. Because my husband is a Civil War

reenactor (wearing Union blue, not Confederate gray), America’s history of slavery

comes up in our conversations frequently. Also, his regiment is part of the Irish Brigade

and recalls a time when the Irish were not yet considered ―white.‖ Of the two issues that

activated the strongest emotional response, the slavery topic hit closer to home.

Asking an African-American friend to watch the film with me carried some risks.

As Professor Britt Andreatta had pointed out during our Leadership Skills for Social

Justice class, individual members of an oppressed group may be ―annoyed that they have

to spend one more minute educating a member of the dominant group‖ (personal

communication, December 16, 2008). I was much relieved when my friend graciously

accepted the invitation. The artifact itself describes in detail how we enjoyed an evening

of deep conversation in which we could step outside our respective stereotypes and from

which I learned much that can be carried forward into future work toward justice.

It turned out that this project was only the beginning of my involvement with

reconciliation principles. Since writing this paper, I have responded to a call to participate

in a newly formed Community of Reconciliation, an ―ecumenical network of individuals

seeking radical balance in life and a deepening commitment to reconciliation in the

world‖ (Community of Reconciliation, 2008). I felt a special connection with this group,

because it had been blessed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the chair of the South African

Truth and Reconciliation Commission during his 2007 U.S. visit. At an introductory

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meeting for the Community, I met a woman of Ghanaian heritage who had studied with

Tutu. We agreed that this group may be what we have both been preparing ourselves

for—an intentional community where the 1500-year-old European wisdom from the

Benedictine tradition, with its idea of a life that incorporates radical balance, can come

together with the centuries-old ubuntu wisdom of Africa and give birth to a new way of

healing.

Finally, just a few weeks before completing this portfolio, I was privileged to

work as a volunteer for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, greeting visitors

who arrived at Union Station and guiding them toward the inaugural events. I had not

expected to see apartheid end in South Africa in my lifetime, and neither had I given

much hope to the possibility of Americans’ electing a president with a dark skin and

mixed racial heritage. Yet there I stood for five hours, offering hospitality in the

Benedictine tradition, watching citizens and immigrants, people of all skin colors and

vastly diverse backgrounds, pour into the nation’s capital wearing broad grins that

affirmed a new potential for reconciliation in our country.

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Tracing the Truth: An Application of the Principles

of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Two races must be able to cry together for true redemption to take place,

for true peace to take place.

Dain Perry in Browne, 2008

We are human because we belong.

Tutu, 1999, p. 196

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission supported that country’s

peaceful transition from government-sanctioned apartheid to a new constitution and free

elections by applying principles that can also bolster reconciliation efforts on a more

personal scale. To explore the value of those principles, I engaged an African-American

friend in a conversation about slavery and its lasting effects on race relations in America.

The Truth Commission principles that contributed most to deepening our encounter were

the creation of a symbolic safe space for honest dialogue, recognition of the need for

compromise and realistic expectations, the practice of active listening, and the sense of

community known to Africans as ubuntu.

The South African Model

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa that operated from

1995 until 1998 (with the Amnesty Committee continuing its work until 2001) was an

integral part of the settlement that ended apartheid. The 1993 Interim Constitution forged

by the government and its former adversaries made a commitment to truth-seeking,

reparations, and amnesty to bring about ―reconciliation between the people of South

Africa and the reconstruction of society‖ (Constitution, 1994, National Unity and

Reconciliation section, ¶ 1). South Africa needed not only to reform its institutions so

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that citizens of all races could participate equally and fairly, but it also had to reestablish

moral order after decades in which extreme cruelty had been an accepted methodology

for the government security apparatus, the resistance, and white militant groups

committed to maintaining apartheid. A crucial element of this process was to emphasize

the African principle of ubuntu as an inclusive community characterized by harmony,

generosity, and compassion. A community that exemplifies ubuntu rejoices when any of

its members achieves success, but it also suffers when any of its members suffer, because

in the words of Desmond Tutu (1999), ―My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound

up, in yours‖ (p. 31).

The Truth Commission, which was established by the Promotion of National

Unity and Reconciliation Act (1995), comprised three committees to examine human

rights violations, to consider amnesty applications, and to make recommendations on

reparations. It began its work in late 1995 under the leadership of Tutu, who was the

Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. In his book on the work of the Truth Commission,

Tutu (1999) acknowledged that many compromises were involved ―to balance the

requirements of justice, accountability, stability, peace, and reconciliation‖ (p. 23). For

example, the commission’s mandate covered only the period from the Sharpeville

massacre in 1960 until Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president in 1994 (Tutu,

p. 104). Furthermore, amnesty was available only for acts with political intent (excluding

non-political murders and other crimes) and required a full disclosure of the

circumstances. The most heinous acts were ineligible, under a principle of proportionality

that weighed the means against the objective. Of more than 7,000 applications related to

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14,000 incidents, only about 16 percent received actual grants of amnesty (Amnesty

International and Human Rights Watch, 2003).

The core of the Truth Commission’s work was to allow those who had been

marginalized to give voice to the unspeakable. The symbolic nuances of the hearings

helped capture the country’s attention and direct it toward healing. For example, choosing

a city hall as a venue for testimony sent a message that government buildings no longer

belonged just to whites (Krog, 1998). Candles, prayers, and songs lent an air of

solemnity, reflecting the influence of Tutu and the three other religious leaders on the

commission. At the human rights hearings, victims sat on the same level as the

commissioners, spoke in their own languages, and were not subjected to cross-

examination (Krog, 1998; Tutu, 1999).

Through extensive media coverage, including radio broadcasts to reach those

who were illiterate and did not have access to television, many South Africans could

witness the work of the human rights and amnesty committees. Although only about 10

percent of the more than 20,000 victim statements resulted in public testimony (Tutu,

1999), those selected to tell their stories gave ample evidence of the dehumanization of

the apartheid era, which affected all South Africans. Martha Minow (1998) has described

how the Truth Commission linked the discovery of the facts about the past with the

possibility of restorative justice:

On behalf of bystanders and perpetrators, as well as victims, it seeks to reestablish

a baseline of right and wrong, to humanize the perpetrators and to obtain and

disclose previously hidden information about what happened, who gave orders,

where missing persons ended up. (p. 78)

On the issue of uncovering previously hidden details, the Truth Commission was

a success. The amnesty hearings traded the possibility of immunity from prosecution for

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accounts of specific incidents, which gave many families their first understanding of how

their loved ones had died and where their remains were located. Furthermore, although

the amnesty process mandated neither contrition nor forgiveness, Tutu (1999) observed

that most amnesty applicants expressed remorse; he cited several cases where a victim’s

family and a perpetrator were reconciled in the hearing room itself.

Evidence of a new ―baseline of right and wrong‖ (Minow, 1998, p. 78) is harder

to come by, because economic and political inequalities remain. The Truth Commission

process envisioned reparations both as a key symbol of restored equity and as a tangible

acknowledgment of the injustices of the past. However, reparations can never adequately

compensate years of inhumane treatment and thus run the risk that ―as statements of

actual value, they trivialize the harms‖ (Minow, 1998, p. 93). Devaluation or ambiguity

about the significance of past injustice may hinder the development of a new moral

model. While the government gave emergency grants to meet some victims’ immediate

needs, the reparations committee was so frustrated over the lack of information on the

outcome of its assistance recommendations—as late as 2003—that it called the situation

an ―appalling failure to meet the basic urgent needs of victims‖ and ―a complete

breakdown in the agreement‖ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2003, p. 173)

between the government and the committee. More than 16,000 victims and family

members eventually received one-time reparation payments of about $3,800 apiece

(Leithead, 2003; Sebelebele, 2004), but poverty, lack of education, and high

unemployment have continued to afflict those who suffered the most under apartheid.

Human Rights Watch stated in 2008 that violent crime also has remained a major

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problem. The level of violence has been brutal, as people ―one-up each other with tales of

scalding and shooting and slicing and garroting‖ (Bearak, 2008, ¶ 9).

What cannot be measured—because there is no available gauge—is whether their

humanity was restored to victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Tutu (1999) concluded

that the Truth Commission process revealed that apartheid ―had far more victims than

anyone had ever thought possible‖ (p. 196)—essentially every individual in South Africa.

Could any reconciliation process reach so many people? David W. Augsburger (1992)

has defined reconciliation as ―a joint process of releasing the past with its pain,

restructuring the present with new reciprocal respect and acceptance, and reopening the

future to new risks and spontaneity‖ (p. 282). Perhaps what the commission

accomplished is best described as expiation. Modern jurisprudence treats expiation as the

necessary penalty paid for or amends made in response to an offense. The Truth

Commission, though, reached back to a more ancient meaning of expiate, defined in the

Oxford English Dictionary as ―to cleanse, purify (a person, a city) from guilt or pollution

by religious ceremonies‖ (Expiate, 1989, ¶ 2). Such purification can be the first step

toward reconciliation—releasing the past, to follow Augsburger’s classification—for it

allows both victims and perpetrators to be renewed in their humanity. From there,

reciprocal acceptance and respect can open the door to a mutually beneficial future of

shared responsibility.

Tracing the Truth

The year 2008 marked the centennial of the abolition of the slave trade in the

United States, but little was said or done about that milestone, especially when compared

with the attention that the corresponding anniversary received in the United Kingdom.

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The House of Representatives did vote for a formal apology to African Americans

(House Resolution 194, 2008), but perhaps a more far-reaching event was the broadcast

premiere of Traces of the Trade (2008), a documentary about a Rhode Island family’s

coming to terms with their ancestors’ involvement in the slave trade. This program, along

with work done in the Pacifica course Leadership Skills for Social Justice, has helped

open the door for me to talk about my own white privilege and to realize that this

frankness is only the first step in a long journey of community-building.

I asked Naomi, an African-American friend, to watch this film with me and

explained that it was part of a project for a class on the South African Truth and

Reconciliation Commission. (To protect her privacy, I have used a pseudonym for my

friend’s name.) She asked how watching the film together might constitute a step toward

reconciliation. I responded that reconciliation begins with moving out of one’s comfort

zone into a space from which one can see things from a different point of view. As noted

above, the process that led to the formation of the Truth Commission involved a great

deal of compromise, trading the ideal for the possible. I did not harbor any illusion that

Naomi and I would be able to solve our country’s racial problems, but I did hope that we

could at least discover where the middle ground might lie. Augsburger (1992) has offered

such exploration as an alternative to argument, especially in the beginning stages of a

conflict-resolution process, to allow participants room to open up to each other’s views

and experiences.

Following the example of the Truth Commission, I tried to bring solemnity and

symbolism to this event and create a welcoming, safe atmosphere for honest sharing. I

decorated with rosemary, an herb of remembrance, and prepared a home-cooked dinner,

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which we ate by candlelight. After Naomi settled into the best spot on the sofa, I recited a

litany that I had written for my social justice class (Artifact 11 in this portfolio) in which

I acknowledged my own shortcomings on such issues as exploitation, powerlessness,

violence, marginalization, and cultural imperialism. The litany ended with a brief prayer,

―May God’s light and peace inspire us to greater awareness and generosity in the service

of those whom we should rightly thank for the privileges we enjoy.‖ Reading the litany

helped establish that I was approaching this event not from a position of moral

superiority, but from a place of humble inquiry. Naomi volunteered that it reminded her

how often she ignores narrow-mindedness even in her own family and does not call

people on it. We then watched the film and talked further after its conclusion.

In that conversation, I tried to emulate another Truth Commission principle, that

of active listening, so that what had been previously unspoken between us could find a

willing ear. Jean Stairs (2000) has called listening ―the most intimate of acts‖ (p. 18):

Sharing experiences can deepen a sense of trust and remind us that we share many

similarities as human beings. Listening for the soul is grounded in the deep

awareness that each of us is a human being who needs other human beings in

order to realize our fullest potential to live in the image of God. (p. 19)

In listening to Naomi, I tried to follow one of the key techniques that Allan G. Johnson

(2006) has recommended for those who strive for social justice—to ―make her experience

and not mine the point of the conversation‖ (p. 142).

This type of listening is the natural corollary of the most important Truth

Commission principle involved in my event—ubuntu or the understanding that, despite

our differences, we live in a single community into which many cultural textures are

woven and where we should, therefore, cultivate inclusivity, generosity, compassion, and

acceptance. This is a challenge we face together, for Naomi and I are members of the

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same spiritual community in Washington, DC. Paradoxically, although the values of

ubuntu are wholly congruent with the stated values of our congregation, the church has

only a minimal presence in the community on social justice issues.

Conclusions

Although Naomi and I did not solve any of the world’s problems—and it became

clear that we differ in our optimism as to whether some problems can be solved at all—

this event provided a good model for deepening my engagement in areas where I sense

the need for reconciliation. I brought no action agenda to the event and simply invited

one-to-one conversation without any intention more specific than exploring whatever was

suggested by the film. If we had been a group instead of a dyad, the event would have

had a completely different dynamic. The film reinforced that learning as well, as Naomi

reflected on how different an experience it would have been if the white filmmaker had

gone to Ghana on her own, rather than taking along nine relatives, which inevitably

turned into a tourist gaggle.

Another major piece of learning that I took away from this event was a greater

awareness of the asymmetrical nature of any reconciliation effort, in this case,

specifically that of black–white cultural engagement. There are few situations in which I

might be compelled to engage with black culture. But for an African-American,

engagement with white culture is an almost daily necessity. Naomi described how

exhausting it was to attend a white-majority school, not just because of the long bus ride,

but because of the overt racism she had to endure each day. She said that when her father

retired, one of the first things he noticed was how relaxing it was to go days without

seeing any white people. She herself finds that she needs a respite from white culture on a

109

regular basis. I found that I could relate to this by remembering how, while I was living

in Moscow, every expatriate I knew took a break from Russia every so often. Even so, I

had to recognize that my ability to escape Russia was itself a reflection of my privilege.

This asymmetrical experience relates directly to what Johnson (2006) has

described as the primary barrier to social change: ―that dominant groups . . . don’t see the

trouble as their trouble, which means they don’t feel obliged to do something about it‖

(p. 127). In the film, the DeWolf family members invited consulting producer Juanita

Brown, who is African-American, into their conversation about how to react to what they

had seen in Ghana and Cuba. She responded:

Given all that’s happened, am I not angry? Of course I’m angry at white people. I

think that white people have been cowards and have chosen to give up their

integrity and their humanity for so long. . . . If you grew up where I grew up,

you’d be pissed off. Anybody who’s alive or who’s paying attention should be

pissed off, and the fact that white people are not pissed off means that they are not

paying attention. (Browne, 2008)

Even when whites do make an effort to focus on race, asymmetry of experience may

form a barrier to each group’s understanding of the other’s response. For example, I felt

empathy for the DeWolfs’ shock at discovering the extent to which the slave trade had

built the family’s reputation and wealth. Naomi, on the other hand, said that she didn’t

understand the tears they shed—tears that I viewed as clear evidence of their shame and

grief. Any attempt at reconciliation should anticipate and acknowledge the inequalities of

experience, power, privilege, and perception always exist between dominant and non-

dominant groups. In some cases, it may be possible to try to level the playing field as the

Truth Commission did by extending the same attentiveness to all. For example, a Xhosa

intellectual, identified as Professor Kondlo, described how the commission created a

supportive environment where women could move from their traditional role as bearers

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of culture into the position of history-makers by telling their stories. The hearing rooms

were ―safe for a political activist, safe for a woman and wife, official in its

acknowledgement of her story as the truth and official in giving her the space to become

a historian, a custodian of history despite her gender‖ (Kondlo, as cited in Krog, 1998,

p. 55).

Another unexpected insight came when Naomi expressed her bafflement at some

aspects of African-American history, such as why so many slaves ran away to the North,

rather than going West, or why there was never a slave revolt on the scale of Haiti’s. We

agreed that there are many things about our respective cultures that we either do not

know or do not comprehend. That deflates the whole concept of any one person being

able to act as a representative for the entire culture, as Naomi had found herself put on the

spot to do when she was the only black child in the classroom or one of the few

American-Americans at a conference.

The open-ended nature of my event highlighted a potential weakness of this one-

to-one approach: It did not result in a clear action plan for addressing the issues we

discussed. Naomi and I did agree, though, that we would both like to spend more such

evenings together, and I could see doing it with other friends as well. The shared honesty

felt cleansing. I sensed that we had achieved, at least in part, Augsburger’s (1992)

reconciliation goals of releasing some of the pain of the past, generating mutual respect

for our present situations, and opening ourselves to taking risks together in the future.

Going forward, I am more confident about approaching issues where I feel

alienated or sense the need for reconciliation, because I have learned from the South

African experience that ―no problem anywhere can ever again be considered to be

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intractable‖ (Tutu, 1999, p. 282). Not only can we call upon hope to buoy our efforts, but

we can also rely on the principles embodied in the work of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission. Whether in casual conversation or in a scheduled event, we can delineate a

symbolic safe space where truth can be spoken and heard, and we can practice active

listening. We can anticipate the need for compromise. Finally, we can activate ubuntu in

our lives by recognizing that we participate in both the suffering and the celebration of

each person with whom we share this interconnected world.

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References

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Unfinished business in South Africa. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/truthandjustice.htm

Augsburger, D. W. (1992). Conflict mediation across cultures: Pathways and patterns.

Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Bearak, B. (2008, October 5). Post-apartheid South Africa enters anxious era. Retrieved

October 25, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/world/africa/

06safrica.html

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deep North [DVD]. (Available from NeoFlix, 2385 Buena Vista Street, Irwindale,

CA 91010)

Community of reconciliation. (2008). Retrieved January 5, 2009, from

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global18513.htm

Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-

Hill.

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new South Africa. New York: Times Books.

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Sebelebele, M. (2004, December 23). Govt calls on TRC victims to claim outstanding

reparations. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from http://www.buanews.gov.za/news/

04/04110213151003

Stairs, J. (2000). Listening for the soul: Pastoral care and spiritual direction.

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Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee: Chapter 2: Administrative report.

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2_8.pdf

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