I've been really sparse with the blog updates lately. I'm not really apologizing for it though, just acknowledging it. It's partly due to me being super busy at work and partly due to a certain someone who has been a welcome distraction. I'll blog more about that later. For now, I'd like to draw your attention to a documentary that some friends of mine are working on called Shamed. Pornography addiction is certainly an issue that can cripple the lives of those who become ensnared, and I think we often don't talk about it in ways that are helpful for those who feel trapped by it. I think the ways we talk about it can actually make things worse.
As stated on their Kickstarter page, "Shamed will look at how to remove the debilitating personal and group shame that exists around pornography and sexuality in conservative Christian communities. Our best protection is open, honest, healthy communication on pornography and sexual addiction, empowering the people we love to SPEAK, LISTEN, and HEAL."
Visit their Kickstarter page and if it's a project you'd like to see happen, send them some monetary love and pass on the link to others who might be interested in contributing.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
a great net of souls
The following is an excerpt from an essay by Joanna Macy entitled "Pass it On." She tells of her experience in 1992 doing some despair and empowerment work with residents of the Russian city Novozybkov, which is one of the cities that was most contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
That afternoon the grief broke open.
It happened unexpectedly, at the close of a guided meditation in which I invited these people of Novozybkov to connect with their ancestors and harvest their strengths. Moving through the room, as on a vast wheel turning, they went backward in time through all preceding generations, with Yuri's voice guiding them. Then they stopped and moved forward, retracing their steps through time, in order to gather the gifts of the ancestors. But when we came up to the year 1986, they balked. They did not want to come any further into the present. They refused to accept the horror of what happened to them then--and that very refusal compelled them to speak of it.
Talk exploded, releasing memories of that unacceptable spring: the searing hot wind from the southwest, the white ash that fell from a clear sky, the children running and playing in it, the drenching rain the followed, the rumors, the fear. Remember how it was? Remember, remember? I saw you standing in your doorway, watching. Our team had laid out paper and colored pencils for people to draw the gifts they'd harvested from the ancestors, but now there was one theme only. A number of the drawings featured trees, and a road to the trees, and across the road a barrier, or a large X, blocking the way.
When we finally reassembled in one large circle, the good feelings that had grown during the workshop shattered into anger, now directed at me. "Why have you done this to us?" a woman cried out. What good does it do? I would be willing to feel the sorrow--all the sorrow in the world--if it could save my two little daughters from cancer. Each time I look at them I wonder about tumors growing inside them. Can my tears protect them? What good are my tears if they can't?"
Angry, puzzled statements came from all around me. Our time together had been so good until now, so welcome a respite from what their lives had become; why had I spoiled it?
Listening to them all, I felt deeply chastened and silently blamed myself for my insensitivity. What, now, could I possibly say? To lecture on the value of despair work would be obscene. When I finally broke the silence that followed the long outburst, I was surprised that the words that came were not about them or their suffering under Chernobyl, but about the people of Hannelore and Anastasia.
"I have no wisdom with which to meet your grief. But I can share this with you: After the war that almost destroyed their country, the German people determined they would do anything to spare their children the suffering they had known. They worked hard to provide them a safe, rich life. They created an economic miracle. They gave their children everything--except for one thing. They did not give them their broken hearts. And their children have never forgiven them."
The next morning, as we took our seats after the Elm Dance, I was relieved to see that all fifty had returned. Behind us, still taped to the walls, hung the drawings of the previous afternoon, the sketches of the trees, and the slashing Xs that barred the way to the trees. "It was hard yesterday," were my opening words. "How is it with you now?"
The first to rise was the woman who had expressed the greatest anger, the mother of the two daughters. "I hardly slept. It feels like my heart is breaking open. Maybe it will keep breaking again and again, I don't know. But somehow--I can't explain--it feels right. It connects me to everything and everyone, as if we were all branches of the same tree."
That afternoon the grief broke open.
It happened unexpectedly, at the close of a guided meditation in which I invited these people of Novozybkov to connect with their ancestors and harvest their strengths. Moving through the room, as on a vast wheel turning, they went backward in time through all preceding generations, with Yuri's voice guiding them. Then they stopped and moved forward, retracing their steps through time, in order to gather the gifts of the ancestors. But when we came up to the year 1986, they balked. They did not want to come any further into the present. They refused to accept the horror of what happened to them then--and that very refusal compelled them to speak of it.
Talk exploded, releasing memories of that unacceptable spring: the searing hot wind from the southwest, the white ash that fell from a clear sky, the children running and playing in it, the drenching rain the followed, the rumors, the fear. Remember how it was? Remember, remember? I saw you standing in your doorway, watching. Our team had laid out paper and colored pencils for people to draw the gifts they'd harvested from the ancestors, but now there was one theme only. A number of the drawings featured trees, and a road to the trees, and across the road a barrier, or a large X, blocking the way.
When we finally reassembled in one large circle, the good feelings that had grown during the workshop shattered into anger, now directed at me. "Why have you done this to us?" a woman cried out. What good does it do? I would be willing to feel the sorrow--all the sorrow in the world--if it could save my two little daughters from cancer. Each time I look at them I wonder about tumors growing inside them. Can my tears protect them? What good are my tears if they can't?"
Angry, puzzled statements came from all around me. Our time together had been so good until now, so welcome a respite from what their lives had become; why had I spoiled it?
Listening to them all, I felt deeply chastened and silently blamed myself for my insensitivity. What, now, could I possibly say? To lecture on the value of despair work would be obscene. When I finally broke the silence that followed the long outburst, I was surprised that the words that came were not about them or their suffering under Chernobyl, but about the people of Hannelore and Anastasia.
"I have no wisdom with which to meet your grief. But I can share this with you: After the war that almost destroyed their country, the German people determined they would do anything to spare their children the suffering they had known. They worked hard to provide them a safe, rich life. They created an economic miracle. They gave their children everything--except for one thing. They did not give them their broken hearts. And their children have never forgiven them."
The next morning, as we took our seats after the Elm Dance, I was relieved to see that all fifty had returned. Behind us, still taped to the walls, hung the drawings of the previous afternoon, the sketches of the trees, and the slashing Xs that barred the way to the trees. "It was hard yesterday," were my opening words. "How is it with you now?"
The first to rise was the woman who had expressed the greatest anger, the mother of the two daughters. "I hardly slept. It feels like my heart is breaking open. Maybe it will keep breaking again and again, I don't know. But somehow--I can't explain--it feels right. It connects me to everything and everyone, as if we were all branches of the same tree."
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