“Truth Within is sacred. It’s whole. It’s a positive energy that unifies and feeds the body and the mind.” – Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE
Several years ago I was teaching an introductory ethics course to a group of university undergrads and was looking for ways to jazz up the standardized curriculum. Just between you and me, this course was pretty dry and one-dimensional. The required reading consisted of rigid ethical decision-making systems that championed “might makes right” with a healthy dose of “the wrath of God” on the side — something akin to being told to eat cardboard when you’re in the middle of a life crisis and hanging on by your fingernails. I wanted to serve my students something tastier, something that would actually help them learn how to think — and to compassionately about the hard choices they may need to make — but my Department Chair bristled at my suggestions.
One night as I was driving home from class, I began thinking about …
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“When people self-organize around their authentic human needs, when they move beyond denial and break out of what I call the ‘social trance,’ when they stop accepting domination and trauma as part of the status quo, partnership values flourish.” — Riane Eisler, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE
When a woman of a particular tribe in Africa knows she is pregnant, she retreats into the rain forest with her friends to pray and meditate, to commune with the Universe and with the soul of the unborn child. In response to their prayers, from the depths of their communion, the Universe reveals the child’s song. Once it is made known to them, the women sing the song aloud amongst themselves. When they return to the village, they teach the song to the rest of the tribe. When the child is born, everyone gathers round the baby and sings the child their song.
When the child begins their education, when he or she is initiated into adulthood, when they are married, the tribe once again comes together and sings them their song. When the person is about to pass from this earth, the tribe gathers one last time at his or her bedside and sings them into the next world.
There is one other occasion when the tribe sings a person their song. If at any time during their life, someone breaks with tribal custom or law the people gather in the center of the village, circle round the person and sing them their song. They do this because they know that the remedy for unlawful or inharmonious behavior is love and the remembrance of your True Identity; that when you hear and sing your own song you have no need or desire to do anything that hurts another.
The members of your tribe — the people who truly love you — are not fooled by the mistakes you make or the darkness you hold about yourself. We see your wholeness when you feel broken, your merit when you feel discouraged. We know your song. We will sing it to you when you have forgotten it. We want you to remember how it goes.
Your thoughts?
Sleeping Beauty
Quick!
He’ s Coming!
I have to lie down
And pretend I’ve been sleeping
All
These years.
Miriam Polestar, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE
I saw the movie Sunday hoping we’d finally have a film that opened an authentic window — maybe even a door — on a woman’s spiritual life. Though Elizabeth Gilbert is no saint, and I offer my thanks to Ingrid Bergman and Leelee Sobieski for their inspired Joans of Arc, it’s about time we had a film about women’s spirituality that doesn’t end with the protagonist being stoned, imprisoned or burned at the stake. I left the theater feeling that Gilbert’s journey, that women’s spirituality, had been trivialized, reduced to a beautifully filmed travelogue about a solemn woman whose undoing was superficial and whose doing up hinged on sensory delights.
Regrettably, all the things that made the book a hoot to read are absent or reconfigured in the film. The real Elizabeth Gilbert is funny. She displays integrity and courage. She visits India, visits her guru — not her boyfriend’s guru as the film portrays — because she wants to connect more deeply with God and integrate her spirituality into her everydayness. Her struggles in meditation occur because mastering “the monkey mind” is a challenge for everyone who meditates, not because she favors interior design over interior prayer. Her insights about her marriage unfold over time, not because a young woman she befriends bites the dust and marries the wrong guy.
When I interviewed Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis …
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“When we hear each other’s stories, we begin to understand ourselves better and feel less alone. … When I tell my stories, it gives others permission to tell their own.” – Alma Flor Ada, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE
Some people say that the world is made up of atoms and protons and electrons, whirling particles invisible to the naked eye that are the heart of matter. My world is made up of stories, narratives about my life and the way the Universe works that provide anecdotal evidence to a spiritual reality that matters to my heart.
I think in stories. My voice mails are stories. I shop for a new pair of shoes or a pound of asparagus and my mind projects scenarios onto the screen of my consciousness about how my purchases will materialize in my daily life. When something doesn’t go as well as I hoped, I rewrite the script in my head, polish up my dialogue or the way I responded to my cues so I can perform my role more effectively next time I take the stage.
Women are natural-born storytellers. It’s one way we share what we know, what we’ve learned. Stories are …
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