12/14/2012
I sit at Talula’s Table, Christmas music straight from the
1950’s plays over the speakers, and little potted Christmas tress festooned
with cotton snow and white knitted scarves line the old storefront window. A
woman at another table jumps up blurting out that twenty-seven
people—children—have died in a shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Fifteen
more are injured. There is a cognitive disconnect between my tea and granola
bar and this horrific story. I hear O
Holy Night now on the sound system. Where is this new and glorious morn?
Perhaps we are not falling on our knees enough or hearing the angel’s voices.
Peace on earth is up to us. We can say this was an isolated shooter. Yet again
another mad man not like us. We have nothing to do with this, we say. And
granted there is individual responsibility in all our actions. Yet there is
also a collective responsibility. What is happening on the societal level that
precipitates this kind of violence?
We live in a bully universe. US drones kill indiscriminately
in foreign lands. Corporations get away with greedy maneuvers that can be
slowly murderous. So where is the surprise that a disgruntled individual bully
carries out what the collective already has done again and again?
My diatribe will do absolutely nothing to assuage the keening
and the mourning of the families in Connecticut who have been so traumatized in
this tragedy.
12/20/2012
I sit again at Talula’s Table wishing Joni Mitchell were
singing over the sound system her Christmas lament, because I too wish I had a
river to skate away on.
The last time I sat here was Friday, December 14. The day of
the massacre of innocents in Connecticut. Since then there have been numerous
incidents of gun violence and children dying, although more anonymously and
with no media outcry.
However, perhaps this tragedy that occurred in the midst of
Christmas in an upper class quintessential New England town may be the tipping
point for a change in consciousness about the pervasiveness of guns in our
culture. Maybe now there will be a great turning—away from violence and truly
in to a more compassionate collective consciousness.
When I manage to give meaning to the absurdity of life, it
helps me not want to skate away on Joni’s river.
I also wonder if these tragedies caused most often by
disenfranchised males (usually white) are not signs of the wounded feminine
rising. I wonder if with the slow turning of consciousness toward a more
compassionate and connected universe that honors the feminine principle that
these men are raising the collective patriarchal shadow that resents this and
rages against the change.
I reiterate, my philosophical musings do nothing to assuage
the keening and the mourning of the survivors of the victims. Nevertheless
finding meaning in tragedy is one way of reinvesting in life.
How is it that a young man uses his mother’s guns to start
his murderous rampage by killing her? What is this rage against the feminine?
If he projected the negative mother archetype onto his own blood, he also
projected it onto the women educators who died courageously attempting to
protect the children in their care. They, to me, attest to the wounded feminine
principle rising even in their dying.
What is the negativity and rage we collectively carry that
produces an individual who murders innocent children who represent the future
and who murders the women who represent the feminine principle in their stolid
compassion?
Here it is, Christmas. Whether you believe in Christ or not,
the story of Herod killing the innocents in order to kill Christ can be a
telling allegory of our time.
Even if we only imagine Christ as symbolic of love and
compassion, we can see in him the integration of the masculine with the
feminine principle. Now imagine Herod as the epitome of patriarchal power and
domination, the antithesis of feminine principle. So it is that Herod feels
threatened by the quiet power of loving kindness and compassion and attempts to
kill Christ in a murderous rage, killing all innocent children.
I have no desire to give any specific contemporary murderer
the power of meaning or motive. Yet I can’t help but ponder what we need to
transform in our collective consciousness to allow the feminine principle to be
no longer so wounded. We need a change of heart to embrace the feminine
principle of connection and compassion. In the aftermath of tragedy, we see the
feminine principle manifested in all sorts of loving acts of kindness. We hear the stories of the acts of courage displayed by the educators, all women , who attempted to protect the children in their care.We see a nation of people connected in their heartfelt response to this tragedy..
."The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain" (Cardinal Montini). May we continue to uphold the wounded feminine rising transforming grief and mourning with such care.
."The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain" (Cardinal Montini). May we continue to uphold the wounded feminine rising transforming grief and mourning with such care.