Women mysteries fascinate me.
For years I felt this pull, this longing to go closer to the Feminine, to her wild, dark, enchanting, witchy, moon bubbling cauldron of mystery.
I have hidden it, to myself and to the world as well, my mind a product of years of patriarchal influences- don't go close to artsy things, stuff with flowers on it, or with those weird "Goddess" drawings.
The pull was so strong, though, that the journey back to Her had already begun before my resistances could catch me.
I would feel a strange jealousy for the women renaissance.
I would wander into Rebecca's Herbal Apothecary and look for hours-seeming moments through the shelves of books, herbs, oils, and creams.
Three years ago I considered becoming a male doula (I would have been only the 2nd person to do it, in the U.S.). I have been lucky to find my way many times as a guest of a revolutionary year-long Midwifery school in Asheville thanks to my sisters Dakota and Camille.
As a male-bodied person, I will never to actually experience the pain and gift of birthing another human (What?! Women make HUMANS. Let's breath on that for a second) and there are mystery that, as millenia-old traditions hold, I should never be allowed to enter into.
Yet the pull towards the mysteries of the womb, the vagina of creation, the witch arts, the moon mysteries is undeniable in me.
With this New Moon in Cancer, I celebrate the Goddess, Her who I am feeling strongly in the Waters of the MEditerranean sea, She who birthed me and can take my life in a wave of a heartbeat, She who gives gives gives. Here is to the Goddess. Here is to you Women, Females in all shapes and forms (human and other-than-human). Thank you for your constant teaching me. As I did as a child completely mesmerized by the Moon, staring at her for hours and then howling with both lungs, I will keep my howl song to you.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
The Gift Unique to You
The Earth, the Soul of this World,
longs for me, for you,
to find and express your unique gift.
Human, you are NOT an accident.
You are not a sin.
You are a poem,
A song,
Within you the force
of hundreds of years of thrusting
Life pushing through
Like a wild river
Be still in the confusion of the forest
silent in the darkness of the maze
Connect with the song of soul
Find the Gift
and share it with us.
We need you.
The health and Wholeness of the World
depends on it.
longs for me, for you,
to find and express your unique gift.
Human, you are NOT an accident.
You are not a sin.
You are a poem,
A song,
Within you the force
of hundreds of years of thrusting
Life pushing through
Like a wild river
Be still in the confusion of the forest
silent in the darkness of the maze
Connect with the song of soul
Find the Gift
and share it with us.
We need you.
The health and Wholeness of the World
depends on it.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Animist
I consider myself an Animist, and I am proud of it.
Look at ShEA
Of course ancestors
heard songs of mermaids
of course ancestors
paid their respect
Look! at ShEA
Spirit of the Seas
TakeLife - GiveLife
Feeding my dry mouth
Enormous belly
Wild, Untamed waters
Depths that shall never be touched
That's where the Magic is born
There are places where Human eyes have no business
I consider myself an Animist, and I am proud of it
Look at ShEA
Of course ancestors
heard songs of mermaids
of course ancestors
paid their respect
Look! at ShEA
Spirit of the Seas
TakeLife - GiveLife
Feeding my dry mouth
Enormous belly
Wild, Untamed waters
Depths that shall never be touched
That's where the Magic is born
There are places where Human eyes have no business
I consider myself an Animist, and I am proud of it
Saturday, May 31, 2014
The Gods are Still Here
I believe in a spirituality grounded in the Earth, connected with place, seasons, and the more-than-human others all around us (foxes, bids, rivers, mountains, trees,etc.)
My research takes me down the roots of ancestral knowings and flip through the literature to find out which Gods and Goddesses my ancestors venerated.
But the spirituality of the Earth is still here.
In the ground. Under my feet and all around me.
Whether they be Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Diana, Apollo, Thor, Odin, or any other SpiritGod that manifested in a specific time to a specific people IN a specific Place. The Gods/esses are STILL here.
In the bones and in the mountains, probably waiting for us humans to remember our place of Human Beings, and give gifts of Beauty and Tears.
So yes to ancestral reconnection and yes to spirituality of place.
The sacred is all around. Praying that my ears may open enough to hear the thousand voices sharing their song.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Trust Your Path
You will be born as a seed and sprouted like a flower onto the sacred, hurting Earth.
You will come at a perilous time.
Despair and confusion in the eyes of your brothers and sisters. Sacredness and beauty forgotten.
The forest will whisper your name.
Indigenous songs will remind you.
Have faith. Breathe. Hold onto signs, smells, intuitions.
Follow the path; like a hunter stalk your pray. Dream. Dance. Sing.
Your every step will become a prayer.
Shoes, socks will fall. Your naked feet touching moist soil.
You will begin to remember.
Trust. Trust.
Your path.
You will come at a perilous time.
Despair and confusion in the eyes of your brothers and sisters. Sacredness and beauty forgotten.
The forest will whisper your name.
Indigenous songs will remind you.
Have faith. Breathe. Hold onto signs, smells, intuitions.
Follow the path; like a hunter stalk your pray. Dream. Dance. Sing.
Your every step will become a prayer.
Shoes, socks will fall. Your naked feet touching moist soil.
You will begin to remember.
Trust. Trust.
Your path.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
3 Causes for Cultural Appropriation
I see three causes for the cultural appropriation, romanticized emulation and stealing of other peoples spiritual practices, culture and regalia:
1) There's a deep hole within me as a person living in [blanket word forthcoming] Modern Western World. The hole was created by various forms of enslavement, colonialism and trauma in my culture through the centuries. Deep Forgetting. This painstaking longing the hole creates leads me to seek, like an addict, quick fulfillment. Intact or semi-intact indigenous cultures can provide that, (the risk is here to plunder a culture like Earth's resources-no respect, asking or acknowledgment.)
2) Looking for my own roots is HARD. I need to sift through centuries of bloodshed, fear, forgetting, and the reality of coming from a line of both colonized and colonizers. For me this is scary, and brings up a lot of anger and heartbreaking grief.
3) If, as Tia Oros Peters (Zuni Nation) says, the language and culture come from the Land, to reconnect with my culture, my practices and my Self, I need to learn to Listen to the Land. To Listen to the Living Earth. Whaaat? That is Hard. It requires me to slow down and get in touch with a whole array of tools and perceptions I have not been taught to engage.
1) There's a deep hole within me as a person living in [blanket word forthcoming] Modern Western World. The hole was created by various forms of enslavement, colonialism and trauma in my culture through the centuries. Deep Forgetting. This painstaking longing the hole creates leads me to seek, like an addict, quick fulfillment. Intact or semi-intact indigenous cultures can provide that, (the risk is here to plunder a culture like Earth's resources-no respect, asking or acknowledgment.)
2) Looking for my own roots is HARD. I need to sift through centuries of bloodshed, fear, forgetting, and the reality of coming from a line of both colonized and colonizers. For me this is scary, and brings up a lot of anger and heartbreaking grief.
3) If, as Tia Oros Peters (Zuni Nation) says, the language and culture come from the Land, to reconnect with my culture, my practices and my Self, I need to learn to Listen to the Land. To Listen to the Living Earth. Whaaat? That is Hard. It requires me to slow down and get in touch with a whole array of tools and perceptions I have not been taught to engage.
I stumble in finding the right words, a way to express myself that is nourishing to your ears and mine. I am in a process of finding my language on these topics.
I will likely be messy, botchy, make no sense at times, piss someone off, or annoy you with these writings. Hopefully there will be inspiration and beauty as well.
I have an intention of moving from an inspired and inspiring place and I need to move through my anger, grief and impulse to blame.
Thanks for staying with me.
I will likely be messy, botchy, make no sense at times, piss someone off, or annoy you with these writings. Hopefully there will be inspiration and beauty as well.
I have an intention of moving from an inspired and inspiring place and I need to move through my anger, grief and impulse to blame.
Thanks for staying with me.
Whiteness. Privilege. Belonging.
PERSONAL POST COMING:
Whiteness. Privilege. Belonging.
What does it mean to belong? Where does our/my pain spring from?
The question of belonging has been with me since I was a young child.
I feel an unspoken solidarity and kinship with "poor people".
People who have struggled with financial hardship and who have had do with less. I know this place, I have felt the struggles, wrestled with the anger of financial oppression, with the feeling of belonging to a "lower cast". When I hang out with friends that have known that pain, there is a sense of "yeah, you get me".
I feel an unspoken solidarity and kinship with people of color (POC).
This is deeper and subtler to the external eye.
This has two layers:
I am an Italian living in America land. I have seen the looks directed my way, the struggles in articulating myself in a broken English, a mainstream culture of people seemingly different than me, and when I first landed here, a group of new cool people that I so longed to belong to.
Even considering my struggles and levels of internalized oppression, my skin is still white and I enjoy a lot of the privileges that white peeps have (ex. the media culture is mostly tailored to people that look like me).
On Italian soil, a similar story repeated. Mom and Dad from Southern Italy, me born and raised in Northern Italy.
The prejudice for having a last name ending in A (meaning you and your family are from the South - and likely to be poor, uneducated, lazy, and dark). For being called a "Terrone" (a derogatory term that literally, and ironically, means "of the Earth").
Internalized racism. Subdued anger and confusion.
When I hang out with friends that have know the pain of marginalization and oppression because of how they look or because of the legacy that one carries in their last name, I feel kinship, there is a sense of "yeah, you get me" (AND I have No idea of what it is actually like to have experienced what they have).
And, at the same time, I feel a kinship with White (gigantic, mono-cropping term) people. After all I have been raised in a industrialized culture, I benefit from my language dexterity, and from my looks and skin color.
Yet when I hang out with White folks (like me, and at the same time, not-like-me) I sense a tension, a fear in speaking about cultural issues such as cultural appropriation and racism.
What may be going on with white people?
In my experience as a white person, I often feel tentative in speaking about these issues. I do not want to offend others or mis-speak, I want to be and look "evolved", politically correct and personally respectful.
It's easy to feel like I'm walking on eggshells.
These topics are new and no one has really taught me how to face them fully, I'm learning as I go and meet others who teach me and I'm bound to make mistakes.
Let's go a layer deeper:
My experience of white culture and white people is of facing the loss of connection to ancestry, roots and land (and this is, of course, true of many POC).
The trail is lost in a past of colonization, slavery and enslavement, industrialization, and the frenetic run towards progress, towards bigger and better, and the cancellation of the past, the roots, the family, the simple, the slow. It's easy to feel like I don't know who I am, where I come from, and it's even easier to mask those confusing feelings.
I hold a white-person guilt from what has been perpetrated and continues to get perpetrated from people of my same skin color. The pain and injustice continues unconsciously through me, by me participating in the structures that keep the power imbalance the way it is today. I am working to change that within me and without me. I am thankful to those that help me see my blindspots.
May I remember Roots..connection with the Mother. The Earth.
To know I am basically held, that I am safe.
Let the healing continue. Lots of work ahead.
My sleeves are pulled.
Whiteness. Privilege. Belonging.
What does it mean to belong? Where does our/my pain spring from?
The question of belonging has been with me since I was a young child.
I feel an unspoken solidarity and kinship with "poor people".
People who have struggled with financial hardship and who have had do with less. I know this place, I have felt the struggles, wrestled with the anger of financial oppression, with the feeling of belonging to a "lower cast". When I hang out with friends that have known that pain, there is a sense of "yeah, you get me".
I feel an unspoken solidarity and kinship with people of color (POC).
This is deeper and subtler to the external eye.
This has two layers:
I am an Italian living in America land. I have seen the looks directed my way, the struggles in articulating myself in a broken English, a mainstream culture of people seemingly different than me, and when I first landed here, a group of new cool people that I so longed to belong to.
Even considering my struggles and levels of internalized oppression, my skin is still white and I enjoy a lot of the privileges that white peeps have (ex. the media culture is mostly tailored to people that look like me).
On Italian soil, a similar story repeated. Mom and Dad from Southern Italy, me born and raised in Northern Italy.
The prejudice for having a last name ending in A (meaning you and your family are from the South - and likely to be poor, uneducated, lazy, and dark). For being called a "Terrone" (a derogatory term that literally, and ironically, means "of the Earth").
Internalized racism. Subdued anger and confusion.
When I hang out with friends that have know the pain of marginalization and oppression because of how they look or because of the legacy that one carries in their last name, I feel kinship, there is a sense of "yeah, you get me" (AND I have No idea of what it is actually like to have experienced what they have).
And, at the same time, I feel a kinship with White (gigantic, mono-cropping term) people. After all I have been raised in a industrialized culture, I benefit from my language dexterity, and from my looks and skin color.
Yet when I hang out with White folks (like me, and at the same time, not-like-me) I sense a tension, a fear in speaking about cultural issues such as cultural appropriation and racism.
What may be going on with white people?
In my experience as a white person, I often feel tentative in speaking about these issues. I do not want to offend others or mis-speak, I want to be and look "evolved", politically correct and personally respectful.
It's easy to feel like I'm walking on eggshells.
These topics are new and no one has really taught me how to face them fully, I'm learning as I go and meet others who teach me and I'm bound to make mistakes.
Let's go a layer deeper:
My experience of white culture and white people is of facing the loss of connection to ancestry, roots and land (and this is, of course, true of many POC).
The trail is lost in a past of colonization, slavery and enslavement, industrialization, and the frenetic run towards progress, towards bigger and better, and the cancellation of the past, the roots, the family, the simple, the slow. It's easy to feel like I don't know who I am, where I come from, and it's even easier to mask those confusing feelings.
I hold a white-person guilt from what has been perpetrated and continues to get perpetrated from people of my same skin color. The pain and injustice continues unconsciously through me, by me participating in the structures that keep the power imbalance the way it is today. I am working to change that within me and without me. I am thankful to those that help me see my blindspots.
May I remember Roots..connection with the Mother. The Earth.
To know I am basically held, that I am safe.
Let the healing continue. Lots of work ahead.
My sleeves are pulled.
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