I've been getting a lot of calls from folks asking about when this year’s Winter Solstice is.
“It's this Sunday,” I tell them.
“Oh, great! Sunday!” they happily reply. (Meaning “Finally a day when I can actually come, because I don't have to work.”) Then they ask, “What time?”
“The ceremony starts at 6:30 AM,” I cheerfully inform them.
“Oh. Well, have a good time!” (Meaning, “I'll think of you out there in the freezing snow as I roll over for four more hours of sleep.”
Every soulstice for the past 34 years I have trekked out — no matter what time, what weather, what infirmity — to invite the sun back into our lives.
Every year, I think that I will be all alone in the dark-freezing-wind-rain-snow at some weird inconvenient hour. That no one else will get up out of their flannel sheets to drum and chant the sun back.
But every year, people do come. And you know what? The toughest, hardest, worst weather, worst-timed events are always everybody's favorite. They are the best memories!
And there is always something hard about the Winter Solstice!
“Remember when it was pouring and we fanned the flames of the fire with our umbrellas?”
“Remember the time the ritual bus broke down in Brooklyn? Broke down in Staten Island? On the Verrazano Bridge?”
“Remember when I wrapped the cast on my broken ankle in a garbage bag so I could walk on the sand of the Atlantic Ocean beach for the solstice fire?”
“Remember when we were all arrested? And ultimately vindicated?”
Oy! During the past 34 years I have learned that it is a very difficult thing, indeed, to bring back the sun. To encourage light and warmth in a cold, dark environment.
But it is so worth the effort!
The exact solstice moment is 7:04AM EST this Sunday morning. Adjust the time to your local zone.) You can celebrate wherever you are. Just get up and go outside, preferably somewhere green. And greet the sun. Align your energy with it. Pledge to be a light in the world. What better ritual could there be?
With bright soulstice blessings,
xxQMD
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: RETREAT DEFFERED
My birthday is rarely a party time any more. Cake and low-fat frozen yogurt are now longer the fulfilling richness I seek in my birthday celebrations. A party just doesn’t feed me, although last year on my birthday I made a dinner party for all of the dear ones in my life who do feed me, help me in all sorts of ways in every aspect of my living — my work assistants past and present, my acupuncturist, my hair cutter, my car mechanic, my mentor, my agent, my oh so ever-helpful lover. I wanted to thank them with conviviality, good food and spirit.
But normally I prefer — crave, actually — solitude and silence. For me, my birthday is a profound opportunity to take serious personal stock. It is the perfect time to check in with my deepest and best self to evaluate the past year and to project the next. “How am I doing?” as old Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. How have I coped? Changed? Succeeded? How am I stuck? What have I learned? And what can I just not get through my thick skull?
For the past thirty years, I have retreated to some extent and fasted to some degree for a one-to-two week period around my birthday, during which time I devote myself entirely to purifying my body, my home, my thoughts, my emotions, my intentions. I keep a series of Birthday Books in which I process my impressions and my lessons, plot my progress, ponder my problems, plan my goals.
I scrub my house. I cleanse my toxins with juices, broths, teas and herbs. And release my tensions with long walks in nature and luxuriantly long baths. I release my inhibitions with yoga and trance dance. I purge my possessions along with the detritus of my mind by culling files, by pruning irrelevance. I plan potlatch giveaways, and extreme throw aways.
This introspective birthday ritual is my way to center myself. To sharpen my focus, realign my perspective and rededicate myself to living the very best life I can. I emerge with energy and enthusiasm, my path re-consecrated with purpose, passion and power. This annual reunion with myself is crucial to my well-being and the purity of my spiritual work. And attendance is required. Or else!
Because of a crazy schedule of personal and professional commitments, I couldn’t do my customary birthday fast and retreat in September this year. And I have really been paying the price for having missed it. For these past two months I have been out of sorts, out of patience, out of my body, out of steam. Generally down and out.
Now that the mad rush of September and October are over and I am feeling so soul bereft and bone weary exhausted, I am determined to have my deferred retreat. I hereby claim the next ten days as mine and mine, alone. Starting now!
My birthday is rarely a party time any more. Cake and low-fat frozen yogurt are now longer the fulfilling richness I seek in my birthday celebrations. A party just doesn’t feed me, although last year on my birthday I made a dinner party for all of the dear ones in my life who do feed me, help me in all sorts of ways in every aspect of my living — my work assistants past and present, my acupuncturist, my hair cutter, my car mechanic, my mentor, my agent, my oh so ever-helpful lover. I wanted to thank them with conviviality, good food and spirit.
But normally I prefer — crave, actually — solitude and silence. For me, my birthday is a profound opportunity to take serious personal stock. It is the perfect time to check in with my deepest and best self to evaluate the past year and to project the next. “How am I doing?” as old Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. How have I coped? Changed? Succeeded? How am I stuck? What have I learned? And what can I just not get through my thick skull?
For the past thirty years, I have retreated to some extent and fasted to some degree for a one-to-two week period around my birthday, during which time I devote myself entirely to purifying my body, my home, my thoughts, my emotions, my intentions. I keep a series of Birthday Books in which I process my impressions and my lessons, plot my progress, ponder my problems, plan my goals.
I scrub my house. I cleanse my toxins with juices, broths, teas and herbs. And release my tensions with long walks in nature and luxuriantly long baths. I release my inhibitions with yoga and trance dance. I purge my possessions along with the detritus of my mind by culling files, by pruning irrelevance. I plan potlatch giveaways, and extreme throw aways.
This introspective birthday ritual is my way to center myself. To sharpen my focus, realign my perspective and rededicate myself to living the very best life I can. I emerge with energy and enthusiasm, my path re-consecrated with purpose, passion and power. This annual reunion with myself is crucial to my well-being and the purity of my spiritual work. And attendance is required. Or else!
Because of a crazy schedule of personal and professional commitments, I couldn’t do my customary birthday fast and retreat in September this year. And I have really been paying the price for having missed it. For these past two months I have been out of sorts, out of patience, out of my body, out of steam. Generally down and out.
Now that the mad rush of September and October are over and I am feeling so soul bereft and bone weary exhausted, I am determined to have my deferred retreat. I hereby claim the next ten days as mine and mine, alone. Starting now!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: SAY SOMETHING!
It is so damn easy to feel depressed, frustrated and disillusioned right now. These are terrible times of artificial division, manipulated resentment and palpable fear. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about warring religious, economic, political or nationalistic factions. Not about the economy. Not about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of opposition — war or peace, right or wrong, rich or poor, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more holistic, congruent manner.
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Because there really is still a chance for peace — and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. It is ultimately up to us, each one of us, all of us, individually and together, to create the kind of world in which we want to live — starting right here, right now. Within the context of our immediate lives, within the concentric circles of our ordinary interactions.
I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace.” “What do you do?” I asked her. “I’m a therapist,” she replied. Surely she has many opportunities in her professional capacity to create peace every day.
Some might argue that we don't have any choice in this upside down dangerous world and that we can't effect what will happen. But even if we can't immediately alter the course of human events on the world stage, we can certainly create change in our own lives and in all of the lives that we touch. And our thoughts are the seeds of that change.
Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Use your thoughts wisely. Understand
their power. Thoughts have a tendency to become their physical equivalent. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Another one is the law of attraction, which states that 'like attracts like.' Because it is consciousness that creates reality, the kind of consciousness you hold — your vibration — actually creates the kind of life you're living.”
So our first order of business must be to stay positive. To entertain only positive possibilities. To imagine only affirmative alternatives. To surround ourselves with wholly uplifting, life-affirming people and influences. To align ourselves solely with the greater good so that our actions will be born of only the finest of our best intentions.
What we all have to do from now on is to stay alert, stay centered, keep connected and most important of all, keep talking. Talking, writing, protesting keeps the light of truth and tolerance shining upon the hidden agendas of governments, industries, institutions and individuals. Silence, like the dark of night, shelters nefarious deeds. Silence forgives violence.
I have been haunted recently by the words written by a Protestant minister after the downfall of the Nazi regime. “First they came for the gays. I am not gay, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Gypsies. I am not a Gypsy, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Jews. I am not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Catholics. I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t say anything. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything.”
Be bold.
Make a statement.
Make a stand.
Make a difference.
In light of the widespread oppression, manipulation, intimidation that surrounds us today, we most certainly need to say something. We need. In fact, to talk to everyone who we meet, actually engage on a human level with those who we encounter as we make it through our day. Not just our families, friends and colleagues — those of presumed like-minds — but also the shoe repair guy, the waitress at the coffee shop, the post office clerk, the bag boy at the super market.
A good example is Dianne, one of the wonderful people who regularly attends my healing circles. She not only prays for the homeless men and women who live on her block, she calls them each by name. I am so impressed and inspired by her personal outreach to the “untouchables.” Everybody is, after all, somebody.
If we ignore, exploit or patronize those people whose lives intersect with ours, how can we expect international relations to be more civilized? We need to walk our talk wherever we go, whatever we do, remembering always, that by doing so we do make a difference. Let us each be a sun, sending our caring energy out into the world, shedding light wherever we go. You never know whom you might touch with the radiance of your warmth.
I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn’t even say, “Hello.” It just starts right in with, “You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let’s make peace — in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all.”
Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions and expectations.
A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, “Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us.” This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of the war.
The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. “Let me call back again,” he implored. “I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good.” The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.
But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?"
Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire — be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland, Angola or the South Bronx. No one wants to live and work in a war zone — in Palestine, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, the World Trade Center or East L.A.
So, buck up and say what is on your mind. The more you do so, the more empowered you will feel.
We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle
With blessings of speaking your truth,
xxQMD
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Because there really is still a chance for peace — and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. It is ultimately up to us, each one of us, all of us, individually and together, to create the kind of world in which we want to live — starting right here, right now. Within the context of our immediate lives, within the concentric circles of our ordinary interactions.
I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace.” “What do you do?” I asked her. “I’m a therapist,” she replied. Surely she has many opportunities in her professional capacity to create peace every day.
Some might argue that we don't have any choice in this upside down dangerous world and that we can't effect what will happen. But even if we can't immediately alter the course of human events on the world stage, we can certainly create change in our own lives and in all of the lives that we touch. And our thoughts are the seeds of that change.
Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Use your thoughts wisely. Understand
their power. Thoughts have a tendency to become their physical equivalent. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Another one is the law of attraction, which states that 'like attracts like.' Because it is consciousness that creates reality, the kind of consciousness you hold — your vibration — actually creates the kind of life you're living.”
So our first order of business must be to stay positive. To entertain only positive possibilities. To imagine only affirmative alternatives. To surround ourselves with wholly uplifting, life-affirming people and influences. To align ourselves solely with the greater good so that our actions will be born of only the finest of our best intentions.
What we all have to do from now on is to stay alert, stay centered, keep connected and most important of all, keep talking. Talking, writing, protesting keeps the light of truth and tolerance shining upon the hidden agendas of governments, industries, institutions and individuals. Silence, like the dark of night, shelters nefarious deeds. Silence forgives violence.
I have been haunted recently by the words written by a Protestant minister after the downfall of the Nazi regime. “First they came for the gays. I am not gay, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Gypsies. I am not a Gypsy, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Jews. I am not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Catholics. I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t say anything. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything.”
Be bold.
Make a statement.
Make a stand.
Make a difference.
In light of the widespread oppression, manipulation, intimidation that surrounds us today, we most certainly need to say something. We need. In fact, to talk to everyone who we meet, actually engage on a human level with those who we encounter as we make it through our day. Not just our families, friends and colleagues — those of presumed like-minds — but also the shoe repair guy, the waitress at the coffee shop, the post office clerk, the bag boy at the super market.
A good example is Dianne, one of the wonderful people who regularly attends my healing circles. She not only prays for the homeless men and women who live on her block, she calls them each by name. I am so impressed and inspired by her personal outreach to the “untouchables.” Everybody is, after all, somebody.
If we ignore, exploit or patronize those people whose lives intersect with ours, how can we expect international relations to be more civilized? We need to walk our talk wherever we go, whatever we do, remembering always, that by doing so we do make a difference. Let us each be a sun, sending our caring energy out into the world, shedding light wherever we go. You never know whom you might touch with the radiance of your warmth.
I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn’t even say, “Hello.” It just starts right in with, “You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let’s make peace — in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all.”
Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions and expectations.
A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, “Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us.” This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of the war.
The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. “Let me call back again,” he implored. “I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good.” The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.
But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?"
Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire — be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland, Angola or the South Bronx. No one wants to live and work in a war zone — in Palestine, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, the World Trade Center or East L.A.
So, buck up and say what is on your mind. The more you do so, the more empowered you will feel.
We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle
With blessings of speaking your truth,
xxQMD
Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
It is hard to stay hopeful when you are worried to death. It requires determined attention and an exquisite combination of focus, concentration and surrender. It is an exercise of discipline, a test of faith, a karmic obligation.
During a recent ceremony of deep cleansing and release, I passed a set of Guatemalan worry dolls around the circle to help us relinquish the nagging apprehensions and insidious anxieties that sap our strength and resolve. All those sneaky, nasty, niggly worries that worm their way into our brains and take up our good time.
Worry dolls are wonderful. There is nothing you can’t tell them. Absolutely nothing shocks them, they’ve heard it all before. And whatever it is that troubles you, they take care of it. Get rid of it. Swallow it. Spirit it away. It is their job, and they are professionals.
What at tremendous relief it is to hand over your distress to someone else to deal with.
As each participant took the tiny figures into the palm of her hand,
s/he would allow the flood gates of her heart to open, and let loose a stream of sadness, stress, panic, guilt, worst-case scenarios, and catastrophic fears.
When the dolls reached Anita, a woman in her late sixties, she calmly declared, “I don’t worry. I hope.”
Brilliant! I felt five decades of self-conscious, conscientious pollyannaism vindicated by the tranceparent truth of that one simple statement. Talk about positive reinforcement.
There are those who say that hope is futile, a waste of time, of precious energy. They contend that hope is completely unrealistic. Simply wishful thinking, they insist. And I say, “Yes. It is, and thank goodness!”
Studies show that optimistic people consistently out-perform those who consider themselves to be more realistic, because they place fewer restrictions on themselves. If you don’t know that something is impossible, you are more likely able to be able to do it. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”
While we often have little or no control over the situations that affect us, we do have control over our own perceptions of them. We do have the very real and extremely potent power of perspective. And we definitely possess the crucial and vitally influential choice of how we will deal with whatever comes our way. How we will handle ourselves.
In a wide range of happiness studies conducted lately, including several with major lottery winners, it was clearly demonstrated that professional, educational, or financial success are not predictors of contentment. Nor are gender, age, race, religion, health, or ethnic background.
The key, common factors across the board that seem to determine satisfaction, peace of mind, and yes, happiness, are: optimism, self-confidence, self-control, connection to community, and living sense of spirituality. And, I might add, the desire to be so.
Take me, for instance. I was the most miserable of children. Painfully shy, sadly confused, and badly bruised; constantly abused by great chilly blasts of debilitating negativity. All I ever wanted was to be happy. When an adult would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would — in my imagination where I dared — answer, “Happy.”
I hung hand lettered and illustrated affirmations (before there was a word for such things) all over my room: I WANT TO BE HAPPY. I WILL BE HAPPY. And then, when I was eighteen years old and living away from home for the first time, it suddenly, incredibly, indelibly occurred to me one marvelous morning that I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be a happy person!
Happiness is fleeting (as is pain.) The trick is to court it, to recognize it — even in camouflage, to acknowledge it’s presence when and where we least expect it, to celebrate each second of the healing heart and soul of it, and to rejoice in our own exhilarating ability to create it for ourselves and others at any given moment, in any circumstance.
“If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
With blessings of inner contentment,
xxQMD
During a recent ceremony of deep cleansing and release, I passed a set of Guatemalan worry dolls around the circle to help us relinquish the nagging apprehensions and insidious anxieties that sap our strength and resolve. All those sneaky, nasty, niggly worries that worm their way into our brains and take up our good time.
Worry dolls are wonderful. There is nothing you can’t tell them. Absolutely nothing shocks them, they’ve heard it all before. And whatever it is that troubles you, they take care of it. Get rid of it. Swallow it. Spirit it away. It is their job, and they are professionals.
What at tremendous relief it is to hand over your distress to someone else to deal with.
As each participant took the tiny figures into the palm of her hand,
s/he would allow the flood gates of her heart to open, and let loose a stream of sadness, stress, panic, guilt, worst-case scenarios, and catastrophic fears.
When the dolls reached Anita, a woman in her late sixties, she calmly declared, “I don’t worry. I hope.”
Brilliant! I felt five decades of self-conscious, conscientious pollyannaism vindicated by the tranceparent truth of that one simple statement. Talk about positive reinforcement.
There are those who say that hope is futile, a waste of time, of precious energy. They contend that hope is completely unrealistic. Simply wishful thinking, they insist. And I say, “Yes. It is, and thank goodness!”
Studies show that optimistic people consistently out-perform those who consider themselves to be more realistic, because they place fewer restrictions on themselves. If you don’t know that something is impossible, you are more likely able to be able to do it. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”
While we often have little or no control over the situations that affect us, we do have control over our own perceptions of them. We do have the very real and extremely potent power of perspective. And we definitely possess the crucial and vitally influential choice of how we will deal with whatever comes our way. How we will handle ourselves.
In a wide range of happiness studies conducted lately, including several with major lottery winners, it was clearly demonstrated that professional, educational, or financial success are not predictors of contentment. Nor are gender, age, race, religion, health, or ethnic background.
The key, common factors across the board that seem to determine satisfaction, peace of mind, and yes, happiness, are: optimism, self-confidence, self-control, connection to community, and living sense of spirituality. And, I might add, the desire to be so.
Take me, for instance. I was the most miserable of children. Painfully shy, sadly confused, and badly bruised; constantly abused by great chilly blasts of debilitating negativity. All I ever wanted was to be happy. When an adult would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would — in my imagination where I dared — answer, “Happy.”
I hung hand lettered and illustrated affirmations (before there was a word for such things) all over my room: I WANT TO BE HAPPY. I WILL BE HAPPY. And then, when I was eighteen years old and living away from home for the first time, it suddenly, incredibly, indelibly occurred to me one marvelous morning that I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be a happy person!
Happiness is fleeting (as is pain.) The trick is to court it, to recognize it — even in camouflage, to acknowledge it’s presence when and where we least expect it, to celebrate each second of the healing heart and soul of it, and to rejoice in our own exhilarating ability to create it for ourselves and others at any given moment, in any circumstance.
“If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
With blessings of inner contentment,
xxQMD
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: WALKING THE TALK
I have just returned from my annual 9/11 chant for peace event — A 911 EMERGENCY CALL FOR PEACE. For seven years, this day has been used as a call to war. I want to reverse that energy and use it as a wake up call, to prod us to think, walk, talk, act for peace.
Our ceremony was moving and sweet. We blessed each other with Tap Roots Oil to honor the fact that we are rooted in each other. That we are the support and sustenance for each other. That we are rooted together in the Earth.
We burnt herbs to dispel all the negative energy that surrounds us. And invited in the sweet spirits of peace. And offered thanks for our lives.
I gave each participant two shamanic amulets: one, a tongue of fire (lengue de fuego) bean seed to help us speak our truth. Every since 9/11, there have been signs in the subway saying, “If you see something, say something.” Yes! We all see so much that is wrong. It is incumbent upon us to speak up. To speak our truth. To walk our talk. To put our money where our mouth is.
The other amulet was a crystal from the last ceremony that I performed at the World Trade Center. A crystal that had absorbed the sunlight of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It is reminder of the presence of light in the dark. A metaphor for the possibility of hope in despair.
I created a labyrinth of salt. As we each walked into the spiral carrying our seed and crustal, we focused on our intention for peace. In the center, we lit candles and made blessings and prayers for peace. As we walked back out from the middle, we thought of ways in which we might be the instruments of peace in our lives and in the greater world.
We chanted and chanted and chanted for peace — for the chance for peace. And by the end of the evening, we were awash in the glow of loving kindness. Our group was a living legacy of that original 9/11.
*
Seven years ago, when the planes flew into the Twin Towers, I was out of the country. It took me more than a week to be able to get past the sealed borders and return home. One thought consumed my mind during that agonizing week of separation from my house, pets, friends and the city that I loved. I craved to be of service to my community.
For 26 years, I had served New York City as an urban shaman. The New Yorker magazine had even dubbed me “the unofficial commissioner of public spirit of New York City. The World Trade Center had been the site of half of the seasonal celebration rituals that I had facilitated and so I was especially bereft at the loss of my public altar.
So in response to the terrible tragedy and in memory of all died that day, I undertook a “Walk Your Talk Pilgrimage.” One by one, I engaged the people whose paths I crossed: friends, the UPS man, the guard at the bank, the waitress at the coffee shop, the washing machine repairman, the people who actually live, work and love in New York City. We shared amazingly intimate, sweetly profound conversations that inevitably ended in a hug or an extra-firm handshake.
It was the human face of this tragedy and its resulting extraordinary state of affairs that I chose to focus on. I did not want to lose track of the myriad emotional and spiritual interconnections that people are capable of making — with each other, with their own best selves, with the greater universal good of all.
I experienced this kinder, gentler city the minute I got back to Brooklyn. A delivery guy was just leaving my building as I arrived home with all my heavy travel bags. When he saw me trying to wrestle them up the stairs, he ran to help me, thank goodness.
He wouldn’t accept a tip and insisted that he just wanted to help. When I asked him if all his relations were safe, he said that they were all fine, but that he felt terrible, because he wanted to do something to help. “You just did,” I reminded him. He was extremely pleased with the notion that this, too, was peace making.
On the way to the coffee shop with friends the next morning, I ran into my neighbor Monifa walking with another woman. We stopped right there in the middle of the street, traffic not withstanding. (And nobody honked.) "How are you?" "How are you?" "No one dead?" "Everyone OK?" We ran our eyes up and down each other looking for signs, for clues of damage. We all six embraced in relief and mutual comfort and then we introduced our selves to the ones in this circle who we didn’t know. We hugged first and asked names later! A sign, surely, of sanity in psychotic times. (And still nobody honked.)
I went to visit the 2nd Fire precinct in my neighborhood to pay my respects. The neighboring community had blanketed the sidewalk up and down the street with offerings of flowers, candles, cakes, tears and messages — one written on World Trade Center stationery and sent as a thank you for saving his life on that fateful day of reckoning.
I shook the hands of one traumatized but sturdy young man and thanked him. I engaged his misting eyes with my own and told him that I prayed that their dedication and sacrifice would be the foundation of a new way to live together as a world community. He locked my eyes and squeezed my hand and bit his quivering lip. He had seen quite enough of war, thank you very much.
At the bank I greeted the lobby guard as usual. I asked him if he was OK. “Not really,” he told me as his eyes filled with tears. His stepfather had been in the building. He escaped, but was shaken to the core. The guard (who I talk to practically every day and whose name I am ashamed to admit I do not know) said that he felt that his step dad would never be the same, like some Viet Nam vets whom he has known who will never be the same.
Then he confessed to me something remarkable. Actually, it was the most profound thing that I have heard anyone anywhere say on the subject of peace. “I hate my uncle,” he told me. “And I have hated my uncle for so long that now I hate anyone who looks like my uncle. ‘Why for you got to go look like my uncle?’ he quoted himself in his West Indian lilt. “Now I have to hate you.” He looked me right in the eyes and said that he realizes now how wrong that is. That he can no longer hate all uncle look-alikes. That he is now even working on trying not to hate his uncle.
I called Judith, one of my counseling clients, who was feeling particularly despondent. A nurse, she had immediately ran to one of the hospitals on Tuesday morning to lend a hand, but after the first batch of the injured passed through the emergency room there was no one else to help. She was desperate to move out of this place of feeling helpless. “I wish there was something that I could do.”
“You could call Linda,” I suggested, knowing that she had had a recent painful falling out with a good friend of hers. She allowed as she had known deep-down all along that in light of everything that has just happened, she should, she wanted to call. But she couldn’t. “Just do it, honey. Make peace.” And she did! And they did.
I witnessed an intense white light, an inner glow that emanated from the people of New York City during the weeks of my walking and talking. We had risen to an unthinkable occasion and we liked ourselves for doing so. We reached out to our neighbors and we found that we liked them, too. And everyone really liked how good it feels to feel good about themselves and each other. People want desperately to do right, to do good, to be good, to live right.
In the hardest of times, we managed to transcend what makes us human and embodied what makes us humane. We saw the putrid smoke of destruction burn clean with the spirit of true communion. We in our beleaguered town have tasted grace. We recognized it for what it is and we cherished living in its beneficence.
So many people have expressed to me their apprehension that as things returned to normal, people might lose some of their newfound consciousness of perspective and interdependence. But why go back there? What used to be normal didn’t really pan out all that well, it seems to me. That old normal isn’t nearly good enough for us who are divine and beautiful beings. Our challenge and our joy is to make this miracle of living in caring community be the new normal.
*
And tonight, seven years later, that vision was embodied in our dear, intimate, communal circle of chanting for peace. There IS still a chance for peace. We are that chance.
With blessings of harmony and helpfulness,
xxQMD
Our ceremony was moving and sweet. We blessed each other with Tap Roots Oil to honor the fact that we are rooted in each other. That we are the support and sustenance for each other. That we are rooted together in the Earth.
We burnt herbs to dispel all the negative energy that surrounds us. And invited in the sweet spirits of peace. And offered thanks for our lives.
I gave each participant two shamanic amulets: one, a tongue of fire (lengue de fuego) bean seed to help us speak our truth. Every since 9/11, there have been signs in the subway saying, “If you see something, say something.” Yes! We all see so much that is wrong. It is incumbent upon us to speak up. To speak our truth. To walk our talk. To put our money where our mouth is.
The other amulet was a crystal from the last ceremony that I performed at the World Trade Center. A crystal that had absorbed the sunlight of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It is reminder of the presence of light in the dark. A metaphor for the possibility of hope in despair.
I created a labyrinth of salt. As we each walked into the spiral carrying our seed and crustal, we focused on our intention for peace. In the center, we lit candles and made blessings and prayers for peace. As we walked back out from the middle, we thought of ways in which we might be the instruments of peace in our lives and in the greater world.
We chanted and chanted and chanted for peace — for the chance for peace. And by the end of the evening, we were awash in the glow of loving kindness. Our group was a living legacy of that original 9/11.
*
Seven years ago, when the planes flew into the Twin Towers, I was out of the country. It took me more than a week to be able to get past the sealed borders and return home. One thought consumed my mind during that agonizing week of separation from my house, pets, friends and the city that I loved. I craved to be of service to my community.
For 26 years, I had served New York City as an urban shaman. The New Yorker magazine had even dubbed me “the unofficial commissioner of public spirit of New York City. The World Trade Center had been the site of half of the seasonal celebration rituals that I had facilitated and so I was especially bereft at the loss of my public altar.
So in response to the terrible tragedy and in memory of all died that day, I undertook a “Walk Your Talk Pilgrimage.” One by one, I engaged the people whose paths I crossed: friends, the UPS man, the guard at the bank, the waitress at the coffee shop, the washing machine repairman, the people who actually live, work and love in New York City. We shared amazingly intimate, sweetly profound conversations that inevitably ended in a hug or an extra-firm handshake.
It was the human face of this tragedy and its resulting extraordinary state of affairs that I chose to focus on. I did not want to lose track of the myriad emotional and spiritual interconnections that people are capable of making — with each other, with their own best selves, with the greater universal good of all.
I experienced this kinder, gentler city the minute I got back to Brooklyn. A delivery guy was just leaving my building as I arrived home with all my heavy travel bags. When he saw me trying to wrestle them up the stairs, he ran to help me, thank goodness.
He wouldn’t accept a tip and insisted that he just wanted to help. When I asked him if all his relations were safe, he said that they were all fine, but that he felt terrible, because he wanted to do something to help. “You just did,” I reminded him. He was extremely pleased with the notion that this, too, was peace making.
On the way to the coffee shop with friends the next morning, I ran into my neighbor Monifa walking with another woman. We stopped right there in the middle of the street, traffic not withstanding. (And nobody honked.) "How are you?" "How are you?" "No one dead?" "Everyone OK?" We ran our eyes up and down each other looking for signs, for clues of damage. We all six embraced in relief and mutual comfort and then we introduced our selves to the ones in this circle who we didn’t know. We hugged first and asked names later! A sign, surely, of sanity in psychotic times. (And still nobody honked.)
I went to visit the 2nd Fire precinct in my neighborhood to pay my respects. The neighboring community had blanketed the sidewalk up and down the street with offerings of flowers, candles, cakes, tears and messages — one written on World Trade Center stationery and sent as a thank you for saving his life on that fateful day of reckoning.
I shook the hands of one traumatized but sturdy young man and thanked him. I engaged his misting eyes with my own and told him that I prayed that their dedication and sacrifice would be the foundation of a new way to live together as a world community. He locked my eyes and squeezed my hand and bit his quivering lip. He had seen quite enough of war, thank you very much.
At the bank I greeted the lobby guard as usual. I asked him if he was OK. “Not really,” he told me as his eyes filled with tears. His stepfather had been in the building. He escaped, but was shaken to the core. The guard (who I talk to practically every day and whose name I am ashamed to admit I do not know) said that he felt that his step dad would never be the same, like some Viet Nam vets whom he has known who will never be the same.
Then he confessed to me something remarkable. Actually, it was the most profound thing that I have heard anyone anywhere say on the subject of peace. “I hate my uncle,” he told me. “And I have hated my uncle for so long that now I hate anyone who looks like my uncle. ‘Why for you got to go look like my uncle?’ he quoted himself in his West Indian lilt. “Now I have to hate you.” He looked me right in the eyes and said that he realizes now how wrong that is. That he can no longer hate all uncle look-alikes. That he is now even working on trying not to hate his uncle.
I called Judith, one of my counseling clients, who was feeling particularly despondent. A nurse, she had immediately ran to one of the hospitals on Tuesday morning to lend a hand, but after the first batch of the injured passed through the emergency room there was no one else to help. She was desperate to move out of this place of feeling helpless. “I wish there was something that I could do.”
“You could call Linda,” I suggested, knowing that she had had a recent painful falling out with a good friend of hers. She allowed as she had known deep-down all along that in light of everything that has just happened, she should, she wanted to call. But she couldn’t. “Just do it, honey. Make peace.” And she did! And they did.
I witnessed an intense white light, an inner glow that emanated from the people of New York City during the weeks of my walking and talking. We had risen to an unthinkable occasion and we liked ourselves for doing so. We reached out to our neighbors and we found that we liked them, too. And everyone really liked how good it feels to feel good about themselves and each other. People want desperately to do right, to do good, to be good, to live right.
In the hardest of times, we managed to transcend what makes us human and embodied what makes us humane. We saw the putrid smoke of destruction burn clean with the spirit of true communion. We in our beleaguered town have tasted grace. We recognized it for what it is and we cherished living in its beneficence.
So many people have expressed to me their apprehension that as things returned to normal, people might lose some of their newfound consciousness of perspective and interdependence. But why go back there? What used to be normal didn’t really pan out all that well, it seems to me. That old normal isn’t nearly good enough for us who are divine and beautiful beings. Our challenge and our joy is to make this miracle of living in caring community be the new normal.
*
And tonight, seven years later, that vision was embodied in our dear, intimate, communal circle of chanting for peace. There IS still a chance for peace. We are that chance.
With blessings of harmony and helpfulness,
xxQMD
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: BEGIN AGAIN
September always feels like New Year to me. It carries so much more significance than does January 1. The first crisp hint of a chill in the air always shakes me out of my summer lethargy, wakes me, makes me more alert. It focuses and concentrates my attention. I can smell the possibilities of a fresh start in the air.
Reinvigorated by the sunny days and laze of summer, life now begins again in earnest in schools, government agencies, cultural institutions and businesses across the country. There is an unmistakable aura of enthusiasm and energy in the air, a palpable sense of intensified determination. This annually renewed resolve seems so much more natural than the resolutions we make at the turn of the calendar year.
Fall jumpstarts everything, including itself. Labor Day has become the popular indicator of autumn, rather than the equinox, which occurs three weeks later. In the same way, Memorial Day, which predates the solstice by three weeks ushers in the civic summer season. By this reckoning, school starts in the fall, even though it is still summer.
Most of us have been indelibly imprinted with the excitement and optimism of the first day of school. There is nothing quite so inspiring as buying blank notebooks, pencils you have to sharpen yourself and some brand new white shirts. So clean, so fresh, so hopeful.
The Jewish New Year falls in the fall. My memories of the High Holy Days that I celebrated as a child with my family have little to do with organized religion. Rather, I remember a domestic sense of auspicious new beginnings: major house cleaning, usually a new outfit to wear to temple and, best, we ate off of the good china with the real silverware.
I think of my birthday as being in the fall, but it is actually four days before the equinox. Our birthday is our own personal New Year. It is an annual reunion that we have with ourselves, and attendance is required. Our birthday is our periodic opportunity to take serious personal stock. “How am I doing?” as Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. Like any new beginning, our birthday is an ideal time to sharpen our priorities, realign our perspective and rededicate ourselves to living the very best life that we can.
Every September I take time out of time to evaluate my past experiences and actions and to prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the coming year. I usually retreat to some extent and fast to some degree during the two-week period surrounding my birthday. The new and full Harvest Moon, and the autumn equinox usually coincide.
This experience is intended to center me and slow me down. It is my birthday gift to myself. During my fast/retreat I devote myself completely to cleansing and centering myself: body, mind and spirit in readiness for the future. I rinse my system with fresh water and teas, I clean my house and altars and I use yoga, meditation and t’ai chi to flush my mind clear of the mental detritus that I have accumulated.
Since the early 1980’s, I have kept a birthday book. Therein, I ritually record an accounting of the past year. I process my impressions and my life lessons. How have I grown? What have I learned? And what is it that I just can’t seem to get through my thick skull? I plot my progress. I ponder my possibilities. I pour over my problems. I plan my goals.
This civic fall also marks the seven-year anniversary of September 11. Let us mark this poignant time by reflecting honestly upon our vulnerability in today’s terrifying political/economic climate, our culpability in the deadly repercussions that arise from our own chauvinistic attitudes and deeds, as well as our impressive individual and communal capacity for extraordinary acts of courage and devotion.
May this new season signal the beginning of a new era of planetary peace and plenty.
With blessings of best intentions and new beginnings,
xxQMD
Reinvigorated by the sunny days and laze of summer, life now begins again in earnest in schools, government agencies, cultural institutions and businesses across the country. There is an unmistakable aura of enthusiasm and energy in the air, a palpable sense of intensified determination. This annually renewed resolve seems so much more natural than the resolutions we make at the turn of the calendar year.
Fall jumpstarts everything, including itself. Labor Day has become the popular indicator of autumn, rather than the equinox, which occurs three weeks later. In the same way, Memorial Day, which predates the solstice by three weeks ushers in the civic summer season. By this reckoning, school starts in the fall, even though it is still summer.
Most of us have been indelibly imprinted with the excitement and optimism of the first day of school. There is nothing quite so inspiring as buying blank notebooks, pencils you have to sharpen yourself and some brand new white shirts. So clean, so fresh, so hopeful.
The Jewish New Year falls in the fall. My memories of the High Holy Days that I celebrated as a child with my family have little to do with organized religion. Rather, I remember a domestic sense of auspicious new beginnings: major house cleaning, usually a new outfit to wear to temple and, best, we ate off of the good china with the real silverware.
I think of my birthday as being in the fall, but it is actually four days before the equinox. Our birthday is our own personal New Year. It is an annual reunion that we have with ourselves, and attendance is required. Our birthday is our periodic opportunity to take serious personal stock. “How am I doing?” as Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. Like any new beginning, our birthday is an ideal time to sharpen our priorities, realign our perspective and rededicate ourselves to living the very best life that we can.
Every September I take time out of time to evaluate my past experiences and actions and to prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the coming year. I usually retreat to some extent and fast to some degree during the two-week period surrounding my birthday. The new and full Harvest Moon, and the autumn equinox usually coincide.
This experience is intended to center me and slow me down. It is my birthday gift to myself. During my fast/retreat I devote myself completely to cleansing and centering myself: body, mind and spirit in readiness for the future. I rinse my system with fresh water and teas, I clean my house and altars and I use yoga, meditation and t’ai chi to flush my mind clear of the mental detritus that I have accumulated.
Since the early 1980’s, I have kept a birthday book. Therein, I ritually record an accounting of the past year. I process my impressions and my life lessons. How have I grown? What have I learned? And what is it that I just can’t seem to get through my thick skull? I plot my progress. I ponder my possibilities. I pour over my problems. I plan my goals.
This civic fall also marks the seven-year anniversary of September 11. Let us mark this poignant time by reflecting honestly upon our vulnerability in today’s terrifying political/economic climate, our culpability in the deadly repercussions that arise from our own chauvinistic attitudes and deeds, as well as our impressive individual and communal capacity for extraordinary acts of courage and devotion.
May this new season signal the beginning of a new era of planetary peace and plenty.
With blessings of best intentions and new beginnings,
xxQMD
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: LETTING GO OF ALL THAT DOES NOT SERVE
I am doing a yard sale tomorrow. A GIGANTIC yard sale. I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to purge this past while. To clean out, throw out, release, discard. To distill and streamline all of my possessions.
This is a huge task, because I have many, many, all too many possessions. I didn’t always have too much. When I was 22, there was a fire in my apartment building, which I escaped in my pajamas. Everything else I owned was burnt, including one of my three cats. After the fire, I possessed literally nothing.
A manuscript of my writing was lost to the flames. It was ironically called Burnt Offerings. Among my most precious offerings were my grandmother’s jewelry and the exquisitely worked infant clothes that she had sewn for my mother, her girl baby. The fire also took my personal archive that used to be stored in my mother’s house before she did the Grand Purge: my scrapbooks, report cards, drawings, awards, photos, etc. The real important stuff.
The fire drove me out to First Street in my nightclothes and in total shock. Luckily, The Catholic Worker charity just happened to be across the street. I ran there barefoot and they gave me a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a sweater. Now I owned three things.
The next day, I withdrew (with quite some difficulty, since I had no passbook or identification) my entire savings of $300. I went to a discount department store and bought underwear, toiletries and an outfit to wear to work. I paid for my purchases and left my wallet on the counter as I walked away, still in a daze. There was to be no more shopping till my next paycheck.
My boyfriend and I spent a couple of months in a Red Cross operated welfare hotel until we could save enough money to get an apartment, a furnished three room place in the Village where we lived for two years. Then I moved alone into a sublet loft for the next two years.
So when I moved into my new loft with my new boyfriend four years after the fire, I still owned next to nothing. I had a sleeping bag, an hibachi, which served as both a stove and a heat source, a box of books and a suitcase of clothes. Nothing else. Nada.
I have been avidly adding to my collections —furnishings, kitchenware, clothes, books, spiritual artifacts, art supplies, office paraphernalia, people, plants, pets —ever since. And now, 37 years later, I am moved to seriously edit and refine my needs and tastes. I want to be surrounded by only those things that are particularly special and meaningful to me.
It has become my practice to throw out, re-cycle, or donate one thing every day. This has been a great way to claim what is truly important to me and to discard what is not. But despite this daily ritual, I still am overwhelmed with accumulated items.
It seems to me that we spend the first half of our lives accumulating things and the second half getting rid of them, paring our possessions down to a manageable cache. This is prime time to check my baggage and lighten up my load.
With blessings of less, which sometimes really can be more,
xxQMD
This is a huge task, because I have many, many, all too many possessions. I didn’t always have too much. When I was 22, there was a fire in my apartment building, which I escaped in my pajamas. Everything else I owned was burnt, including one of my three cats. After the fire, I possessed literally nothing.
A manuscript of my writing was lost to the flames. It was ironically called Burnt Offerings. Among my most precious offerings were my grandmother’s jewelry and the exquisitely worked infant clothes that she had sewn for my mother, her girl baby. The fire also took my personal archive that used to be stored in my mother’s house before she did the Grand Purge: my scrapbooks, report cards, drawings, awards, photos, etc. The real important stuff.
The fire drove me out to First Street in my nightclothes and in total shock. Luckily, The Catholic Worker charity just happened to be across the street. I ran there barefoot and they gave me a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a sweater. Now I owned three things.
The next day, I withdrew (with quite some difficulty, since I had no passbook or identification) my entire savings of $300. I went to a discount department store and bought underwear, toiletries and an outfit to wear to work. I paid for my purchases and left my wallet on the counter as I walked away, still in a daze. There was to be no more shopping till my next paycheck.
My boyfriend and I spent a couple of months in a Red Cross operated welfare hotel until we could save enough money to get an apartment, a furnished three room place in the Village where we lived for two years. Then I moved alone into a sublet loft for the next two years.
So when I moved into my new loft with my new boyfriend four years after the fire, I still owned next to nothing. I had a sleeping bag, an hibachi, which served as both a stove and a heat source, a box of books and a suitcase of clothes. Nothing else. Nada.
I have been avidly adding to my collections —furnishings, kitchenware, clothes, books, spiritual artifacts, art supplies, office paraphernalia, people, plants, pets —ever since. And now, 37 years later, I am moved to seriously edit and refine my needs and tastes. I want to be surrounded by only those things that are particularly special and meaningful to me.
It has become my practice to throw out, re-cycle, or donate one thing every day. This has been a great way to claim what is truly important to me and to discard what is not. But despite this daily ritual, I still am overwhelmed with accumulated items.
It seems to me that we spend the first half of our lives accumulating things and the second half getting rid of them, paring our possessions down to a manageable cache. This is prime time to check my baggage and lighten up my load.
With blessings of less, which sometimes really can be more,
xxQMD
Monday, July 28, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: BELLY DANCING
My friend Kay is the official folklorist of Brooklyn. This winter she organized a month long Arab music festival. One of the evenings was a belly dance extravaganza, which I attended with my entire Goddess Group.
I was still on my cane following my fall a few months earlier, but that didn’t prevent me from getting up to swing my hips with everyone else during the participatory dance jam sessions in between the performer’s sets.
How could I stay in my seat? The music was so mesmerizing and the dancers so alluring. A sea of swaying, undulating arms, breasts and bellies, moving to the rhythms of the ages. That room was filled with fiery female energy. We were all, men and women alike, enveloped in the embrace of the Goddess.
“I want to learn how to belly dance,” I announced and Suzanne immediately said that she would take lessons with me. But I was hesitant about attending a class full of twenty-something skinny girls.
I really didn’t want to be the only zaftig mama old enough to almost be their grandmother in the bunch. But then, again, the Queen doesn’t deign to think such petty thoughts. Or does she?
Andrea, one of the women in one of my spirit support groups, a long time belly dancer who is twenty-something, lovely and lithe, directed me to the perfect class. A beginner’s class with women from their twenties to their sixties, every shape, size, color and aptitude.
And so, at the age of 62 I have taken up belly dance. Or perhaps I should say it has taken me up and held me in its thrall. It feels so natural, somehow. Sensual, earthy. elemental. Slightly sinful and delicious. It got my juices flowing big time.
I first saw belly dancing in Morocco thirty years ago. The women were
much older than me, mature and fleshy. Real women who had seen a lot of life and who knew a lot of things. Secure in their own power, they danced with assurance, and emanated an authoritative energy rather like Gypsy flamenco dancers.
Belly dancing gets better with age. My friend Serpentessa is an extraordinary belly dancer who performs with her snakes, She moves like the serpents who are her familiars. She is no spring chicken, but a luscious juicy autumn hen. My teacher’s teacher is coming to New York this fall to give classes in double veil technique. She is in her 80’s.
Last summer I gave a keynote address and workshop about The Queen at the International Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. On the last day there was celebration to honor the 90th birthday of Grand Dame Lady Olivia Robertson, founder of the Fellowship of Isis.
She appeared in a transparent gossamer toga-like garment, trailing veils and her long flowing white hair behind her. She danced slowly, with a concentrated reverence. Every movement was a prayer — in touch, intense and internal. Essential. Archetypal.
A ceremony to crown the Queens and the Crones followed Lady Olivia’s awesome dance. The mature women at the conference chose whether they were Queens or Crones.
There were maybe a hundred Queens sitting in a large circle and about a dozen Crones in a small circle inside of that royal round of Queens. The Maidens and Mothers sat outside of the circle and bore witness to the crownings. Nonagenarian Lady Olivia, Goddess bless her soul, insisted on being crowned a Queen. And so she is! It’s got to be the dancing.
With blessings of supple grace and grandeur,
xxQMD
I was still on my cane following my fall a few months earlier, but that didn’t prevent me from getting up to swing my hips with everyone else during the participatory dance jam sessions in between the performer’s sets.
How could I stay in my seat? The music was so mesmerizing and the dancers so alluring. A sea of swaying, undulating arms, breasts and bellies, moving to the rhythms of the ages. That room was filled with fiery female energy. We were all, men and women alike, enveloped in the embrace of the Goddess.
“I want to learn how to belly dance,” I announced and Suzanne immediately said that she would take lessons with me. But I was hesitant about attending a class full of twenty-something skinny girls.
I really didn’t want to be the only zaftig mama old enough to almost be their grandmother in the bunch. But then, again, the Queen doesn’t deign to think such petty thoughts. Or does she?
Andrea, one of the women in one of my spirit support groups, a long time belly dancer who is twenty-something, lovely and lithe, directed me to the perfect class. A beginner’s class with women from their twenties to their sixties, every shape, size, color and aptitude.
And so, at the age of 62 I have taken up belly dance. Or perhaps I should say it has taken me up and held me in its thrall. It feels so natural, somehow. Sensual, earthy. elemental. Slightly sinful and delicious. It got my juices flowing big time.
I first saw belly dancing in Morocco thirty years ago. The women were
much older than me, mature and fleshy. Real women who had seen a lot of life and who knew a lot of things. Secure in their own power, they danced with assurance, and emanated an authoritative energy rather like Gypsy flamenco dancers.
Belly dancing gets better with age. My friend Serpentessa is an extraordinary belly dancer who performs with her snakes, She moves like the serpents who are her familiars. She is no spring chicken, but a luscious juicy autumn hen. My teacher’s teacher is coming to New York this fall to give classes in double veil technique. She is in her 80’s.
Last summer I gave a keynote address and workshop about The Queen at the International Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. On the last day there was celebration to honor the 90th birthday of Grand Dame Lady Olivia Robertson, founder of the Fellowship of Isis.
She appeared in a transparent gossamer toga-like garment, trailing veils and her long flowing white hair behind her. She danced slowly, with a concentrated reverence. Every movement was a prayer — in touch, intense and internal. Essential. Archetypal.
A ceremony to crown the Queens and the Crones followed Lady Olivia’s awesome dance. The mature women at the conference chose whether they were Queens or Crones.
There were maybe a hundred Queens sitting in a large circle and about a dozen Crones in a small circle inside of that royal round of Queens. The Maidens and Mothers sat outside of the circle and bore witness to the crownings. Nonagenarian Lady Olivia, Goddess bless her soul, insisted on being crowned a Queen. And so she is! It’s got to be the dancing.
With blessings of supple grace and grandeur,
xxQMD
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: AN ANGEL PASSES
Last weekend I spent three days and nights with four very old friends in a lovely country house in Connecticut. We were there to help Sarah prepare for the annual fair on the village green that she directs - a huge endeavor with zillions of details to attend to. Just like my public ritual events.
On the night before the fair we stayed up to all hours preparing the descriptive cards for the silent auction. There we were, five midlife women up way after our bedtime, drinking white wine and trying to come up with snappy slogans for all 90 lots in the auction. Well I tell you!
We were completely slaphappy. Shouting out these ridiculous phrases in praise of Dottie’s Donuts, The Well Manicured Pet, and the Agway. Punning around shamelessly. We just laughed and laughed. Huge, full, deep belly laughs. “When was the last time,” I thought to myself, “that I have laughed so hard for so long?”
I actually remember when. It was at a wonderful brunch that I gave for six friends. Diane, who is always funny, was on a roll that day and kept us in stitches for hours. We laughed the entire afternoon away. It was last fall. Totally wonderful, but entirely too long ago.
I have known Sarah, Erica, Daile, and Kay for decades. They are beloved family for me. Yet I see them for food and fun so rarely. We live in different places and we are all always so busy. It was such a delicious joy to have so much uninterrupted quality time together. Being in their company was like being in the embrace of the Goddess, Herself.
My all time favorite film is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut. There is a beautiful scene in it where these two men, a woman and a child, a loving chosen family, are sitting around after a meal. They are sated and happy, comfortably quiet and content. Safe with each other. Out of the sweet silence Oscar Werner says, “An angel is passing.”
That is exactly how I felt in Connecticut. It was a perfect time. Nothing could ever feel better. An angel definitely passed that night.
Yours for love and laughter,
xxQMD
On the night before the fair we stayed up to all hours preparing the descriptive cards for the silent auction. There we were, five midlife women up way after our bedtime, drinking white wine and trying to come up with snappy slogans for all 90 lots in the auction. Well I tell you!
We were completely slaphappy. Shouting out these ridiculous phrases in praise of Dottie’s Donuts, The Well Manicured Pet, and the Agway. Punning around shamelessly. We just laughed and laughed. Huge, full, deep belly laughs. “When was the last time,” I thought to myself, “that I have laughed so hard for so long?”
I actually remember when. It was at a wonderful brunch that I gave for six friends. Diane, who is always funny, was on a roll that day and kept us in stitches for hours. We laughed the entire afternoon away. It was last fall. Totally wonderful, but entirely too long ago.
I have known Sarah, Erica, Daile, and Kay for decades. They are beloved family for me. Yet I see them for food and fun so rarely. We live in different places and we are all always so busy. It was such a delicious joy to have so much uninterrupted quality time together. Being in their company was like being in the embrace of the Goddess, Herself.
My all time favorite film is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut. There is a beautiful scene in it where these two men, a woman and a child, a loving chosen family, are sitting around after a meal. They are sated and happy, comfortably quiet and content. Safe with each other. Out of the sweet silence Oscar Werner says, “An angel is passing.”
That is exactly how I felt in Connecticut. It was a perfect time. Nothing could ever feel better. An angel definitely passed that night.
Yours for love and laughter,
xxQMD
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: INTERDEPENDENCE DAY
I was recently invited to address a gathering of clergy who are being trained to serve as resident chaplains in the pastoral care department of a major urban medical center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.
What a fascinating assignment. I immediately sat myself down to give some serious thought to the substance of their request. After much rifling through of books and files as well as several sessions of deep meditation on the topic at hand, I realized that there is no such thing.
From a shamanic point of view (as well as quantum scientific thought) separation is a false concept. It is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, since we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. The fact is there is no such thing as opposing sides.
There is only one side: just us folks, all of us everywhere, trying to live life as best we can, much more alike than different. There is no us and them. There is only us. We — all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future — are the world.
We come from our Mother Earth and return to Her belly. We are made of the same substance as the sea, the soil, the stars. There are, and ever have been, only so many molecules in existence, and all the rest — birth, growth, death, decay, development, change, evolution, transformation — is really just about recycling.
We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors, continually inhaling and exhaling, trading carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millennia. And the same holds true for water. We drink the tears of crocodiles and elephants. We wash in the drainage of the ages. It rains, it pools, it evaporates, it rains. We drink, we pee, we drink, we pee. Again and again and again in a grand scale cosmic round robin.
All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone we leave some of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones in an intimate epidermal exchange. Thus we merge, quite literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we. We are all in this together, inextricably bound, riding on our beautiful blue planet through space and time. We are one team, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity. And the sooner we realize it, the happier, safer, and saner we will be.
Today we are surrounded by artificial division, manipulated resentment and fear-mongered anxiety. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about conflicting religious, economic or nationalistic factions. It is not even about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of contrast, of black and white opposition — good or evil, right or wrong, war or peace, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more harmonious, holistic and congruent manner.
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who perceive the big picture to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity, support, and empathetic embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Let us come out of the cocoon closets of our isolated, separate selves and set our intentions on unity. Let us come together to make connections. To make friends. To make sense. To make art. To make amends. To make whoopy. To make time. To make magic. To make love. To make change. To make peace in our hearts and on the planet.
Let us project ourselves outward as cooperative partners; as interconnected members of our families, communities, species and world; as consciously coexistent inhabitants of our planet, and as conscientious co-creators of our combined future. Life on Earth depends upon our interdependent efforts.
Yours for a fabulous fourth of July,
xxMama Donna
What a fascinating assignment. I immediately sat myself down to give some serious thought to the substance of their request. After much rifling through of books and files as well as several sessions of deep meditation on the topic at hand, I realized that there is no such thing.
From a shamanic point of view (as well as quantum scientific thought) separation is a false concept. It is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, since we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. The fact is there is no such thing as opposing sides.
There is only one side: just us folks, all of us everywhere, trying to live life as best we can, much more alike than different. There is no us and them. There is only us. We — all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future — are the world.
We come from our Mother Earth and return to Her belly. We are made of the same substance as the sea, the soil, the stars. There are, and ever have been, only so many molecules in existence, and all the rest — birth, growth, death, decay, development, change, evolution, transformation — is really just about recycling.
We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors, continually inhaling and exhaling, trading carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millennia. And the same holds true for water. We drink the tears of crocodiles and elephants. We wash in the drainage of the ages. It rains, it pools, it evaporates, it rains. We drink, we pee, we drink, we pee. Again and again and again in a grand scale cosmic round robin.
All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone we leave some of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones in an intimate epidermal exchange. Thus we merge, quite literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we. We are all in this together, inextricably bound, riding on our beautiful blue planet through space and time. We are one team, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity. And the sooner we realize it, the happier, safer, and saner we will be.
Today we are surrounded by artificial division, manipulated resentment and fear-mongered anxiety. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about conflicting religious, economic or nationalistic factions. It is not even about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of contrast, of black and white opposition — good or evil, right or wrong, war or peace, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more harmonious, holistic and congruent manner.
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who perceive the big picture to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity, support, and empathetic embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Let us come out of the cocoon closets of our isolated, separate selves and set our intentions on unity. Let us come together to make connections. To make friends. To make sense. To make art. To make amends. To make whoopy. To make time. To make magic. To make love. To make change. To make peace in our hearts and on the planet.
Let us project ourselves outward as cooperative partners; as interconnected members of our families, communities, species and world; as consciously coexistent inhabitants of our planet, and as conscientious co-creators of our combined future. Life on Earth depends upon our interdependent efforts.
Yours for a fabulous fourth of July,
xxMama Donna
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: WHY FRIDAY THE 13TH IS A VERY LUCKY DAY, INDEED
When the 13th day on the month lands on a Friday, the culturally unfavorable attributes of each are multiplied by infinity. Friday, the day of original sin, the day Jesus died, the day of public hangings, in combination with 13, the number of steps on a gallows, the number of coils of rope in a hangman’s noose, the number of the Death card in the tarot deck, is indubitably designated as a day of portent
and doom.
The pitiful suicide note of a window washer that was found with his body in a gas-filled room at his home and quoted in a 1960 issue of the Yorkshire Post, underscores its powerful, popular reputation, "It just needed to rain today — Friday the 13th — for me to make up my mind." Poor sod.
But up until the patriarchal revolution, both Fridays and 13s were held in the very highest esteem. Both the day and the number were associated with the Great Goddesses, and therefore, regarded as the sacred essence of luck and good fortune. Thirteen is certainly the most essentially female number — the average number of menstrual cycles in a year. The approximate number, too of annual cycles of the moon. When Chinese women make offerings of moon cakes, there are sure to be 13 on the platter. Thirteen is the number of blood, fertility and lunar potency. 13 is the lucky number of the Great Goddess.
Held holy in Her honor, Friday was observed as the day of Her special celebrations. Jews around the world still begin the observance of the Sabbath at sunset on Friday evenings when they invite in the Sabbath Bride. Friday is the Sabbath in the Islamic world. Friday is also sacred to Oshun, the Yoruban orisha of opulent sensuality and overwhelming femininity, and Frig the Norse Goddess of love and sex, of fertility and creativity. Her name became the Anglo-Saxon noun for love, and in the sixteenth century, frig came to mean “to copulate.”
Friday the 13th is ultimately the celebration of the lives and loves of Lady Luck. On this, Her doubly-dedicated day, let us consider what fortuitous coincidences constitute our fate. The lucky blend of just the right conditions, chemistries, elements and energies, which comprise our universe. The way it all works. The way we are. That we are at all. That, despite whatever major or minor matters we might think are unlucky, we have somehow managed to remain alive and aware. This Friday the 13th, let us stand in full consciousness of the miraculousness of existence and count our blessings. Knock on wood.
With blessings of nectar and honey,
xxQMD
and doom.
The pitiful suicide note of a window washer that was found with his body in a gas-filled room at his home and quoted in a 1960 issue of the Yorkshire Post, underscores its powerful, popular reputation, "It just needed to rain today — Friday the 13th — for me to make up my mind." Poor sod.
But up until the patriarchal revolution, both Fridays and 13s were held in the very highest esteem. Both the day and the number were associated with the Great Goddesses, and therefore, regarded as the sacred essence of luck and good fortune. Thirteen is certainly the most essentially female number — the average number of menstrual cycles in a year. The approximate number, too of annual cycles of the moon. When Chinese women make offerings of moon cakes, there are sure to be 13 on the platter. Thirteen is the number of blood, fertility and lunar potency. 13 is the lucky number of the Great Goddess.
Held holy in Her honor, Friday was observed as the day of Her special celebrations. Jews around the world still begin the observance of the Sabbath at sunset on Friday evenings when they invite in the Sabbath Bride. Friday is the Sabbath in the Islamic world. Friday is also sacred to Oshun, the Yoruban orisha of opulent sensuality and overwhelming femininity, and Frig the Norse Goddess of love and sex, of fertility and creativity. Her name became the Anglo-Saxon noun for love, and in the sixteenth century, frig came to mean “to copulate.”
Friday the 13th is ultimately the celebration of the lives and loves of Lady Luck. On this, Her doubly-dedicated day, let us consider what fortuitous coincidences constitute our fate. The lucky blend of just the right conditions, chemistries, elements and energies, which comprise our universe. The way it all works. The way we are. That we are at all. That, despite whatever major or minor matters we might think are unlucky, we have somehow managed to remain alive and aware. This Friday the 13th, let us stand in full consciousness of the miraculousness of existence and count our blessings. Knock on wood.
With blessings of nectar and honey,
xxQMD
Saturday, June 7, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: MY BEE CAME BACK TO SAY GOODBY
For years, there has been a certain auspicious day every spring when a bumblebee would fly onto my terrace garden where it would hover contentedly everyday, all day long, throughout the entire summer, until a certain day in autumn when it would fly away.
This ritual visitation took place without fail for more than 15 years until a few years ago when my bee stopped showing up. I say “my bee.” But was it? Could it possibly have been the same bee for a decade and a half? How long to do bees live?
Or did my fuzzy fat friend select a successor who also passed the mantle when her vacation time was up? But whether or not it was the same bee, it was definitely my bee. My buddy. My constant summer companion. My nectar-gathering compatriot.
In Hellenistic Greece, bees were understood to be related to and a manifestation of the muse. My bee was an inspiration to me, as well, and I missed her visits dearly. And so did my flowers.
My bee isn’t the only one who stopped showing up. Millions upon millions of bees all over the world have been abandoning their hives and simply disappearing. Scientists named this mysterious phenomena colony collapse disorder.
If they are dying, they have chosen to do it in private, because large numbers of their corpses have not been found. Last year I found three dead bee bodies on the sidewalk just outside of my building. I saved their remains and added them to my growing collection of dead bumblebees. I keep my beautiful box filled with dead bees on my healing altar, where I pray for their wellbeing.
In some areas over sixty percent of the American honeybee population has died or disappeared during the past ten years, and this trend is continuing around the world. The potential results of this trend are terrifying. After all, one in three bites of all that we consume has been pollinated by bees.
In 1923 Rudolf Steiner predicted the dire state of the honeybee today. He said that within fifty to eighty years, we would see the consequences of mechanizing the forces that had previously operated organically in the beehive — including breeding queen bees artificially.
Well, I could have them that the Queens don’t take interference kindly. And now they are having their royal revenge — a terrible, drastic, exacting retribution, which maybe, just maybe, might force us to rethink our precarious relationship with Mother Nature.
Last week, my bee came back. I was completely delighted, overtaken by the depth and passion of my joy at our reunion. She hovered in front of my face for a moment then landed on my leg. And stayed there for a really long time, our bodies buzzing in unison.
Soon I noticed that she was uncharacteristically lethargic. Oh, no! Did she come back to die on me? I began to stroke her back ever so softly. I whispered prayers and gave her reiki. Then, because I had to leave, I placed her on the dirt of one of my flowering plants. If she was going to die, I wanted it to be in nature.
When I returned home a few hours later, the first thing I did was rush out to check on the bee, half expecting to see her lying on her back with her legs sticking up in the air.
But she was gone. Just gone.
“Like the bees from which this exhibition has drawn its name, we are individuals, yet we are, most surely, like the bees, a group, and as a group we have, over the millennia, built ourselves a hive, our home. We would be foolish, to say the least, to turn our backs on this carefully and beautifully constructed home especially now, in these uncertain and unsettling times.”
-The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Venice , CA
With blessings of nectar and honey,
xxQMD
This ritual visitation took place without fail for more than 15 years until a few years ago when my bee stopped showing up. I say “my bee.” But was it? Could it possibly have been the same bee for a decade and a half? How long to do bees live?
Or did my fuzzy fat friend select a successor who also passed the mantle when her vacation time was up? But whether or not it was the same bee, it was definitely my bee. My buddy. My constant summer companion. My nectar-gathering compatriot.
In Hellenistic Greece, bees were understood to be related to and a manifestation of the muse. My bee was an inspiration to me, as well, and I missed her visits dearly. And so did my flowers.
My bee isn’t the only one who stopped showing up. Millions upon millions of bees all over the world have been abandoning their hives and simply disappearing. Scientists named this mysterious phenomena colony collapse disorder.
If they are dying, they have chosen to do it in private, because large numbers of their corpses have not been found. Last year I found three dead bee bodies on the sidewalk just outside of my building. I saved their remains and added them to my growing collection of dead bumblebees. I keep my beautiful box filled with dead bees on my healing altar, where I pray for their wellbeing.
In some areas over sixty percent of the American honeybee population has died or disappeared during the past ten years, and this trend is continuing around the world. The potential results of this trend are terrifying. After all, one in three bites of all that we consume has been pollinated by bees.
In 1923 Rudolf Steiner predicted the dire state of the honeybee today. He said that within fifty to eighty years, we would see the consequences of mechanizing the forces that had previously operated organically in the beehive — including breeding queen bees artificially.
Well, I could have them that the Queens don’t take interference kindly. And now they are having their royal revenge — a terrible, drastic, exacting retribution, which maybe, just maybe, might force us to rethink our precarious relationship with Mother Nature.
Last week, my bee came back. I was completely delighted, overtaken by the depth and passion of my joy at our reunion. She hovered in front of my face for a moment then landed on my leg. And stayed there for a really long time, our bodies buzzing in unison.
Soon I noticed that she was uncharacteristically lethargic. Oh, no! Did she come back to die on me? I began to stroke her back ever so softly. I whispered prayers and gave her reiki. Then, because I had to leave, I placed her on the dirt of one of my flowering plants. If she was going to die, I wanted it to be in nature.
When I returned home a few hours later, the first thing I did was rush out to check on the bee, half expecting to see her lying on her back with her legs sticking up in the air.
But she was gone. Just gone.
“Like the bees from which this exhibition has drawn its name, we are individuals, yet we are, most surely, like the bees, a group, and as a group we have, over the millennia, built ourselves a hive, our home. We would be foolish, to say the least, to turn our backs on this carefully and beautifully constructed home especially now, in these uncertain and unsettling times.”
-The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Venice , CA
With blessings of nectar and honey,
xxQMD
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: TIME TO PLANT TREES
Lately I’ve seen several outrageous television commercials that blithely extol the benefits of throwaway dust rags and floor mops and disposable baby bibs, of all things. Apparently the landfills are not yet filled to over-flowing capacity with pampers as I had assumed. As it is, every American uses an average of 4-6 trees a year on paper goods, wood products, and newsprint.
Knowing myself to be a concerned citizen and certified Queen of Reducing, Re-using and Recycling, I feel morally indignant in the face of such crass waste. The mere sight of The New York Sunday Times stacked in high piles at the newsstand fills me with queasy guilt. Heaven forbid I should buy one. I take my own bags to the grocery. I use cloth napkins and hankies and refuse to use paper towels. I’m the one who used the same paper bag for 65 days worth of coffees-to-go.
All well and good, but what have I done lately? What did I do today?
This is an important distinction: what did I do versus what did I not do. The issue is not how many trees did I save, but how many trees did I plant? I am 62-years old. That means that I should have planted 250-350 trees by now to replace those that I have used. While I have conducted quite a few tree-planting ceremonies over the years, I still owe the earth a new orchard, at least.
Maybe it is self-defeating to think that we should be giving up comforts and luxuries in order to be more environmentally correct and connected. Such negative terminology doesn’t make acting conscientiously seem like a very attractive prospect, but rather like some sort of deprivation that would appeal only to martyrs. That’s just bad psychology. Unproductive. The medicine does not have to taste bad in order to work well.
Perhaps it is more fruitful to think not of giving something up, but of giving something back. It is the most elemental and universal rule of etiquette that if you take something, you put it back; if you use something, you replace it — plus some. While saving and conserving are admirable virtues to be commended and encouraged, being generous and proactively responsive is equally crucial to our survival, body and soul. Take less. Give more.
It is pay back time. So I pledge to plant trees this Spring. As many as I can. Won’t you join me?
Let’s plant trees everywhere. In our gardens, inside our houses, throughout our parks and school-yards. Even those of us who live in the most crowded cement cities can join a community garden or participate in a park clean-up and planting day.
We can “buy” acres of rain forest to give as gifts or have trees planted in honor of all the special occasions celebrated by friends and family. We could adopt a neighborhood or a stretch of highway and help take care of it. Like a brigade of Green Guerilla Queens, we could spread out and scatter wildflower seeds in every vacant lot, strip, mall and avenue median. Just like Queen Lady Bird did.
With best vernal blessings,
xxQMD
Knowing myself to be a concerned citizen and certified Queen of Reducing, Re-using and Recycling, I feel morally indignant in the face of such crass waste. The mere sight of The New York Sunday Times stacked in high piles at the newsstand fills me with queasy guilt. Heaven forbid I should buy one. I take my own bags to the grocery. I use cloth napkins and hankies and refuse to use paper towels. I’m the one who used the same paper bag for 65 days worth of coffees-to-go.
All well and good, but what have I done lately? What did I do today?
This is an important distinction: what did I do versus what did I not do. The issue is not how many trees did I save, but how many trees did I plant? I am 62-years old. That means that I should have planted 250-350 trees by now to replace those that I have used. While I have conducted quite a few tree-planting ceremonies over the years, I still owe the earth a new orchard, at least.
Maybe it is self-defeating to think that we should be giving up comforts and luxuries in order to be more environmentally correct and connected. Such negative terminology doesn’t make acting conscientiously seem like a very attractive prospect, but rather like some sort of deprivation that would appeal only to martyrs. That’s just bad psychology. Unproductive. The medicine does not have to taste bad in order to work well.
Perhaps it is more fruitful to think not of giving something up, but of giving something back. It is the most elemental and universal rule of etiquette that if you take something, you put it back; if you use something, you replace it — plus some. While saving and conserving are admirable virtues to be commended and encouraged, being generous and proactively responsive is equally crucial to our survival, body and soul. Take less. Give more.
It is pay back time. So I pledge to plant trees this Spring. As many as I can. Won’t you join me?
Let’s plant trees everywhere. In our gardens, inside our houses, throughout our parks and school-yards. Even those of us who live in the most crowded cement cities can join a community garden or participate in a park clean-up and planting day.
We can “buy” acres of rain forest to give as gifts or have trees planted in honor of all the special occasions celebrated by friends and family. We could adopt a neighborhood or a stretch of highway and help take care of it. Like a brigade of Green Guerilla Queens, we could spread out and scatter wildflower seeds in every vacant lot, strip, mall and avenue median. Just like Queen Lady Bird did.
With best vernal blessings,
xxQMD
Saturday, May 10, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN BORN OF MOTHERS
Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War,
as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who
had lost their sons.
The following is the original Mother's Day Proclamation
written by Julia Ward Howe in Boston, 1870:
"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have heart,
whether our baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly:
'We will not have our great questions decided by irrelevant
agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with
carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken
from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be
too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be
trained to injure theirs.'
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without limits of nationality
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most
convenient and at the earliest period consider with its objects
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the
amicable settlement of international questions, the great and
general interests of peace."
Let us take her eloquent plea for peace to heart. In the name
of all the mothers all through time beginning with the creatrix
Mother Goddesses and in the interest of our precious Mother Earth,
let us lend our voice, our time, our money, our energy and our
passion to the cause of peace on the planet.
xxYour Mama Donna
as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who
had lost their sons.
The following is the original Mother's Day Proclamation
written by Julia Ward Howe in Boston, 1870:
"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have heart,
whether our baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly:
'We will not have our great questions decided by irrelevant
agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with
carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken
from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be
too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be
trained to injure theirs.'
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without limits of nationality
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most
convenient and at the earliest period consider with its objects
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the
amicable settlement of international questions, the great and
general interests of peace."
Let us take her eloquent plea for peace to heart. In the name
of all the mothers all through time beginning with the creatrix
Mother Goddesses and in the interest of our precious Mother Earth,
let us lend our voice, our time, our money, our energy and our
passion to the cause of peace on the planet.
xxYour Mama Donna
Monday, May 5, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: TIME FLIES
I can’t believe that I didn't post at all last month. Where did April go? The weeks and months, it seems, just melted into each other. But each day seemed endless.
Last week I bumped into my neighbors Time and Andrea as I was out walking Poppy in the morning and they were leaving for work. We stood around talking for a few minutes, and then we each proceeded with our day. It was a long and tiring day — for me, at least. Filled with work and play, spirit and pleasure.
Late that same evening, I was out with the dog and once again saw Tim and Andrea as they were getting home from work, dinner, and a couple of sets at a music club. Again, we hung around and chatted. I said something like, “When I saw you guys last week…” And Tim said, “that was this morning!”
How could that be? It seemed like forever ago. Time is such a slippery scoundrel. It is impossible to pin it down long enough to grab hold of it. It just keeps slithering away.
Time is a paradox, at once temporary and permanent, external and internal, objective and subjective. And it is so confusing. Days that are weeks long and filled with 10,000 things. Weeks, which seem like seconds, fleeting and ephemeral.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity."
-Albert Einstein
Time flies and time stands still. Time passes, but is forever. Time creates. Time maintains. Time destroys. I save time, I waste time, I keep time, I lose time, I kill time, I make time, I take time out.
Time is a sneak thief, hell bent on racing toward my mortality, so I will do all I can to outsmart it by savoring every precious moment, by being conscious, focused, and conscientious in each second. By being here now.
Blessings of eternity,
xxMama Donna
Last week I bumped into my neighbors Time and Andrea as I was out walking Poppy in the morning and they were leaving for work. We stood around talking for a few minutes, and then we each proceeded with our day. It was a long and tiring day — for me, at least. Filled with work and play, spirit and pleasure.
Late that same evening, I was out with the dog and once again saw Tim and Andrea as they were getting home from work, dinner, and a couple of sets at a music club. Again, we hung around and chatted. I said something like, “When I saw you guys last week…” And Tim said, “that was this morning!”
How could that be? It seemed like forever ago. Time is such a slippery scoundrel. It is impossible to pin it down long enough to grab hold of it. It just keeps slithering away.
Time is a paradox, at once temporary and permanent, external and internal, objective and subjective. And it is so confusing. Days that are weeks long and filled with 10,000 things. Weeks, which seem like seconds, fleeting and ephemeral.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity."
-Albert Einstein
Time flies and time stands still. Time passes, but is forever. Time creates. Time maintains. Time destroys. I save time, I waste time, I keep time, I lose time, I kill time, I make time, I take time out.
Time is a sneak thief, hell bent on racing toward my mortality, so I will do all I can to outsmart it by savoring every precious moment, by being conscious, focused, and conscientious in each second. By being here now.
Blessings of eternity,
xxMama Donna
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: SPRING HAS SPRUNG AND SO HAVE I
Well, I am fine. Out and about and as good as new. Whew ! That was a long haul. But now I am finally finding my way back to my body again and doesn’t it feel fabulous.
Before my famous fall I had started to wear a pedometer with the goal of walking at least 10,000 steps a day, which is recommended for optimum fitness. When I first crawled out of my convalescent bed I put the pedometer back on and measured my first attempts at hobbling about. I could only handle around 400 steps a day.
Now, a month later, I am doing 10-11,000 steps every other day. I walk every morning — in the park if I possibly can. Starting the day in nature, walking through the woods and along streams sets me up for the entire day. It is more nourishing than breakfast.
In a couple of weeks I will get back to my water aerobics class. It is still too cold. Even though the pool is indoors and the gym is quite warm and everyone else in the class (all of whom are older than me) manages to get there rain or shine or snow, I just can’t seem to be able to rouse myself from my flannel sheets to go jump in the water.
But my excuses are almost over. As soon as the weather warms up to the 50’s I’ll be there. The water movement will be great for strengthening and stretching my weakened and stiff muscles. Besides, it is fun and I love it. And I can have a sauna afterward.
Yoga is another story. I am craving the forward bends and stretches and sometimes stop in the middle of working to bend down to my toes and just hang out, as it were, for a minute or so. It releases tension and feels like a mini vacation.
But it really hurts to stand on my knees for any of the table positions or the child pose. Even so, I will start to do some of my yoga tapes and skip the parts I can’t do.
Last week I went to a belly dance extravaganza. The music is so mesmerizing and invigorating and the dancers were so sensual and lithe, it made me want to take lessons. My friend Suzanne said that she would take them with me, which is great because without her I would be the only chubby middle aged woman among all the young sprites. Now we will be two Queen goddesses!
I have never, NEVER been an active, athletic person, but something about having been injured and immobile for so long has lit a fire under me. And for the first time in my life I have wanted to exercise, move, groove. What fun!
Before my famous fall I had started to wear a pedometer with the goal of walking at least 10,000 steps a day, which is recommended for optimum fitness. When I first crawled out of my convalescent bed I put the pedometer back on and measured my first attempts at hobbling about. I could only handle around 400 steps a day.
Now, a month later, I am doing 10-11,000 steps every other day. I walk every morning — in the park if I possibly can. Starting the day in nature, walking through the woods and along streams sets me up for the entire day. It is more nourishing than breakfast.
In a couple of weeks I will get back to my water aerobics class. It is still too cold. Even though the pool is indoors and the gym is quite warm and everyone else in the class (all of whom are older than me) manages to get there rain or shine or snow, I just can’t seem to be able to rouse myself from my flannel sheets to go jump in the water.
But my excuses are almost over. As soon as the weather warms up to the 50’s I’ll be there. The water movement will be great for strengthening and stretching my weakened and stiff muscles. Besides, it is fun and I love it. And I can have a sauna afterward.
Yoga is another story. I am craving the forward bends and stretches and sometimes stop in the middle of working to bend down to my toes and just hang out, as it were, for a minute or so. It releases tension and feels like a mini vacation.
But it really hurts to stand on my knees for any of the table positions or the child pose. Even so, I will start to do some of my yoga tapes and skip the parts I can’t do.
Last week I went to a belly dance extravaganza. The music is so mesmerizing and invigorating and the dancers were so sensual and lithe, it made me want to take lessons. My friend Suzanne said that she would take them with me, which is great because without her I would be the only chubby middle aged woman among all the young sprites. Now we will be two Queen goddesses!
I have never, NEVER been an active, athletic person, but something about having been injured and immobile for so long has lit a fire under me. And for the first time in my life I have wanted to exercise, move, groove. What fun!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: MORE LESSONS OF THE FALL
just when the power of positive thinking
had me thinking i had some control
i got knocked to my knees by a hot dog wagon.
not flattened not thrown not knowing what hit me
just knocked to my knees and forced to bow down.
—DH 1974
This is the 10th week after the fall and I am pretty much back together again. While I was fortunate not to have had a more serious injury from my December fall, my convalescence has been quite slow, nonetheless. Shocking, really, just how slow. This winter has been a long and leisurely one during which I completely hibernated. I concentrated on healing myself and also worked to understand and integrate the many-layered lessons of the fall.
Gratitude, first and foremost, was Lesson Number One. While normally I am quite conscious of my appreciation for my life and living, everyone’s attitude of gratitude can stand a periodic upgrading.
I fell at home in my own office, rather than somewhere out on the road during all my travels of the past three years. Cookie was there and helped me instantly. I was nursed and massaged and reikied and shiatsued and reflexed, accupunctured and blessed, and materially supported in every possible generous manner.
Grateful hardly expresses how I felt. I celebrated every tiny victory of movement and mobility as a dramatic miracle. I was ever so thankful for each small pleasure. The first time I could roll over in bed! Hurray! The first time I could bend my leg! The first time I could put on my own sock! The first time I left the walker and used a cane! The first time I took the dog out! The first time I walked around the block! And this morning when I left the house for the first time without my cane! Life is such a miracle. I am eternally grateful to be part of it.
Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon
faces or voices or healing power coming
suddenly near to us from far off, but upon
our perceptions being made finer so that
for a moment our eyes can see and our ears
can hear that which is about us always.
—Willa Cather
Beyond the parameters of this particular incident, I was reminded of how much I love this world — life, nature, creatures, comforts, beauty. Just how precious and tenuous it all is. In light of September 11th and this horrible war, we are all struggling to keep that crucial 911 emergency lesson foremost in our minds at all times. How important it is to raise and praise the universal spirit at every turn. Be Here Now. Live Life. Be Great and Full. Thank All Goodness.
When I first landed on the floor, I thought that I would just sit there for a few seconds, catch my breath and then continue with my packed agenda. I would shoulder through, like always. But within minutes of the fall it became painfully — excruciatingly — obvious that there was no way that I could possibly carry on as normal. I had fallen down on the job, as it were, and my only option was to sit still.
Letting Go, Lesson Number Two, was an insistent, obstinate, merciless task-mistress who would accept nothing less than total vulnerability, absolute humility, and hopefully at the end of the day, some measure of grace.
I do not understand the mystery of grace —
only that it meets us where we are, but
does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne LaMott
Asking for Help, Lesson Number Three, always a hard one for me, became much easier after I allowed myself to let go of all those macho martyr assumptions that I perpetrate upon myself. Such as thinking I can be a bottomless source of never-ending energy without ever having to replenish my own reserves. Such as feeling — like so many caregivers, healers, and light workers do — that everyone else’s needs must be dealt with before my own, me being in the line of service, after all. Such as resisting well meant offers of assistance.
Before the fall, if someone volunteered to give me a massage, I would invariably demure. “Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, but that’s O.K.” Meaning what? That I didn’t need anything? That I didn’t deserve anything? Now, during my winter of healing, I was becoming able to over-ride my ego and say, “Yes, please, I do need help. I am in trouble here. Thank you so much. I am so grateful”
Learning How to Attend to My Own Requirements and Boundaries and how to take as loving good care of myself as I do of others is Lesson Number Four. I have been struggling to learn this lesson for decades. It is clearly my Life Lesson. I keep thinking that I have learned it. But then something comes along to remind me how much more I have to improve. I have managed quite well over the years to sustain myself spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. It is on the material and physical plane that I tend to fall down, as it were. As the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes has reminded me time and time again over the past thirty years, “Feed the cow.” How else can the poor dear give milk, after all?
So, the lessons contemplated and understood, if not yet completely integrated, I emerge from my accident determined to heal myself for once and for all. It is time. I cannot continue to push myself beyond the max. I definitely can’t keep falling.
I acknowledge that though I am most definitely a Queen, I am not omnipotent. That I do need help from time to time. That I do have needs and that I need to honor and enforce them. That in addition to being Mama Donna to the world, I need to be mother to myself, as well.
I promise myself to respect my limitations of strength, energy, time, and resources. I promise to continue to be grateful for each breath that allows me to live this precious life and to value it in its entirety. And most important of all, I pledge to allow myself to sit down occasionally, to lie down, even, so that I don’t have to fall down to get some rest.
L’Chaim,
xxQueen Mama Donna
had me thinking i had some control
i got knocked to my knees by a hot dog wagon.
not flattened not thrown not knowing what hit me
just knocked to my knees and forced to bow down.
—DH 1974
This is the 10th week after the fall and I am pretty much back together again. While I was fortunate not to have had a more serious injury from my December fall, my convalescence has been quite slow, nonetheless. Shocking, really, just how slow. This winter has been a long and leisurely one during which I completely hibernated. I concentrated on healing myself and also worked to understand and integrate the many-layered lessons of the fall.
Gratitude, first and foremost, was Lesson Number One. While normally I am quite conscious of my appreciation for my life and living, everyone’s attitude of gratitude can stand a periodic upgrading.
I fell at home in my own office, rather than somewhere out on the road during all my travels of the past three years. Cookie was there and helped me instantly. I was nursed and massaged and reikied and shiatsued and reflexed, accupunctured and blessed, and materially supported in every possible generous manner.
Grateful hardly expresses how I felt. I celebrated every tiny victory of movement and mobility as a dramatic miracle. I was ever so thankful for each small pleasure. The first time I could roll over in bed! Hurray! The first time I could bend my leg! The first time I could put on my own sock! The first time I left the walker and used a cane! The first time I took the dog out! The first time I walked around the block! And this morning when I left the house for the first time without my cane! Life is such a miracle. I am eternally grateful to be part of it.
Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon
faces or voices or healing power coming
suddenly near to us from far off, but upon
our perceptions being made finer so that
for a moment our eyes can see and our ears
can hear that which is about us always.
—Willa Cather
Beyond the parameters of this particular incident, I was reminded of how much I love this world — life, nature, creatures, comforts, beauty. Just how precious and tenuous it all is. In light of September 11th and this horrible war, we are all struggling to keep that crucial 911 emergency lesson foremost in our minds at all times. How important it is to raise and praise the universal spirit at every turn. Be Here Now. Live Life. Be Great and Full. Thank All Goodness.
When I first landed on the floor, I thought that I would just sit there for a few seconds, catch my breath and then continue with my packed agenda. I would shoulder through, like always. But within minutes of the fall it became painfully — excruciatingly — obvious that there was no way that I could possibly carry on as normal. I had fallen down on the job, as it were, and my only option was to sit still.
Letting Go, Lesson Number Two, was an insistent, obstinate, merciless task-mistress who would accept nothing less than total vulnerability, absolute humility, and hopefully at the end of the day, some measure of grace.
I do not understand the mystery of grace —
only that it meets us where we are, but
does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne LaMott
Asking for Help, Lesson Number Three, always a hard one for me, became much easier after I allowed myself to let go of all those macho martyr assumptions that I perpetrate upon myself. Such as thinking I can be a bottomless source of never-ending energy without ever having to replenish my own reserves. Such as feeling — like so many caregivers, healers, and light workers do — that everyone else’s needs must be dealt with before my own, me being in the line of service, after all. Such as resisting well meant offers of assistance.
Before the fall, if someone volunteered to give me a massage, I would invariably demure. “Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, but that’s O.K.” Meaning what? That I didn’t need anything? That I didn’t deserve anything? Now, during my winter of healing, I was becoming able to over-ride my ego and say, “Yes, please, I do need help. I am in trouble here. Thank you so much. I am so grateful”
Learning How to Attend to My Own Requirements and Boundaries and how to take as loving good care of myself as I do of others is Lesson Number Four. I have been struggling to learn this lesson for decades. It is clearly my Life Lesson. I keep thinking that I have learned it. But then something comes along to remind me how much more I have to improve. I have managed quite well over the years to sustain myself spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. It is on the material and physical plane that I tend to fall down, as it were. As the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes has reminded me time and time again over the past thirty years, “Feed the cow.” How else can the poor dear give milk, after all?
So, the lessons contemplated and understood, if not yet completely integrated, I emerge from my accident determined to heal myself for once and for all. It is time. I cannot continue to push myself beyond the max. I definitely can’t keep falling.
I acknowledge that though I am most definitely a Queen, I am not omnipotent. That I do need help from time to time. That I do have needs and that I need to honor and enforce them. That in addition to being Mama Donna to the world, I need to be mother to myself, as well.
I promise myself to respect my limitations of strength, energy, time, and resources. I promise to continue to be grateful for each breath that allows me to live this precious life and to value it in its entirety. And most important of all, I pledge to allow myself to sit down occasionally, to lie down, even, so that I don’t have to fall down to get some rest.
L’Chaim,
xxQueen Mama Donna
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: ASHES, ASHES, ALL FALL DOWN
The emails responding to my fall keep coming in. And so so many many of them relate stories of their own recent falls. The number is staggering. What is going on? It is like the ground is being pulled out from under our feet.
These are women and men from all over the country and beyond. Is there a common denominator that connects us? Is this a general trend? What is going on?
Well, there does seem to be a connection. I did notice that almost to a person, everyone on this list is either a spiritual practitioner/healer or an artist of some sort. We are all cultural creatives, out-of-the-box thinkers, visionaries, empaths, seers.
We are the first responders. And, with our world so seriously out of whack, there is a lot to respond to these days. We are surrounded by unhealthy, unstable, toxic conditions. There is so much pain and suffering, exploitation and domination on our poor beleaguered planet.
And we tend to take it all in. To take it upon ourselves to fix, to transform whatever/whoever needs help. Whenever. We are overwhelmed. We are exhausted. Is it any wonder we are shaky on our feet?
Here are some of the letters. What do you think is going on?
I am writing because I have fallen twice in the past month, and that is HIGHLY UNUSUAL. I have been feeling less sure-footed and "out of the flow" just enough to have it be on the front burner of my awareness. Therefore, when you wrote that others in your circle have reported falling lately, and it peaked your curiosity, I couldn't resist writing and introducing myself. So, thank you for your New Year reminder of the importance that we be solidly grounded. I am adding that to my intentions.
-Susan, CA
I wanted to let you know that I also fell a month ago in the kitchen of the Harrisburg Unitarian Church. Yes, I do need to be more centered. There were many healers on hand when I fell. I have recovered with much help also. Aren't sisters great? Peace,
-Randa, PA
I know how you must feel since I fell on ice a few weeks ago and tore tendons in my shoulder and rotator cuff. It's been very painful.
-Vince, NY
As you mention the trend of many of us falling, I have to report that my best friend in Florida took a tumble (for no apparent reason), broke her arm and hand in three places and had two surgeries. After reading your note, I stopped and recalled that I've fallen (flat out down on the ground — and once rolling) three times in the past six months. Every time, I've gotten up, stunned that I'd not gotten seriously hurt. Not even a bruise. Blessed be.
-August, CA
Funny thing, the likelihood of falling again, whether spiritually or physically, is sometimes great if you don't watch your footing along the path. I stumble quite a bit myself with my head in the clouds and all. Just the other day I was so taken with the beautiful deer in my backyard, I fell right out the backdoor....geeeez....right smack dab on my keester. It wasn't a graceful fall either. First the ankle went sideways, the elbow hit the siding twisting the arm as I tried to stop myself and then the whole body went into this type of goofy mode as I continued my descent to the concrete. It was quite a sight to behold. Needless to say, I was sore for a couple days but not too bad. Thank Goddess for extra padding in the caboose!
-Kimi, NJ
This Mars retrograde causing accidents, especially when combined with anger, speed and fatigue. It is opposing Pluto for the next couple of days and we all should be careful. I fell on my right shoulder 3 times between April and July and was very injured. I had a slight fall this afternoon as well. I am going to be very careful for the next month, especially the next few days.
-Nan, TX
My brother-in-law in Rochester, NY, fell two weeks ago today and broke 3 ribs. Needless to say, he's been in quite a bit on discomfort & pain. However, your words about people falling reminded me, too, that I've been hearing a lot about peoples' falls. Lots of them. Certainly will pass that "awareness" along & remind folks to slow down and be careful.
-Pam, NY
I also have tripped and fallen a lot of times this year, and I now go downstairs like an old lady. I also fell going up the stairs near the swimming pool and I injured a rib. Very painful and it took 6 weeks to heal! Also still have a lump on knee from another fall! With me I think it is that I forget to lift my legs enough. But it must be a common occurrence in "Older" people, because we got a leaflet through the door the other day, which invited us to come to a meeting (of old age pensioners!) to learn how to avoid falling! Yuck!
-Bé, England
I just fell down the stairs and hurt my back.
-Emma, NY
My friend’s husband, a young man, fell down the stairs on his way to work. He broke is neck and died instantly. What a tragedy.
-dava, VA
I just tripped over my dog and broke both arms.
John, FL
I was so sorry to read about your fall, then I had one, too — in the darkest dark, out checking to see if the car was locked, slipping on a wet rock, going down on my tail bone. Now I am on drugs and a walker for 8-10 weeks and it hurts.
-Jo, AZ
Having taken several nasty falls myself (the last of which entailed a 3-day hospital stay due to fractured ribs and a collapsed lung), I know how painful recovery can be. And I know how frustrating immobility can be! Active minds demand active bodies.
Smoky, IL
Thanks for this post about slow life
Hmmmmmmmm
I just fell last week
Toooooooooooooooo muchhhhhhhhhhhhhh everything
Sending rest & love to usssssssssssssss
-Linda, NY
Funny — I fell walking my friend's dog and sprained my ankle. I put too much ice on it and got burns and also cracked my left pinky finger — now taped together. I am in constant pain and will take months to recover. Yes, my friend also fell on black ice upstate — sad — she is in lots of pain. Don’t know if it is cosmic or what, but so many of my friends have been falling also. Wonder what these falls mean? Please pray for me too. Thanks.
-Naomi, NJ
We are fragile in such funny ways. So strong and then, our bodies... I am taking care of my mother. She fell walking home and fractured her kneecap. She is 89.
-Annie, MA
I too fell the other day, on my knee, outside. Maybe bad weather for priestesses. I'm certain it's karmic.
Marion, NY
I know what it is to fall and sprain/break things, having experienced it myself not too long ago. This may be an astrologically prone time for falling, because Gail's brother-in-law AND her sister both fell within one day of each other, one broke his femur and the other her arm and wrist.
-Charoula, OH
Thanks for reminding us to stay grounded. I, too, have heard about people falling down.
-Sheryll, CA
Very strange point about many others falling. My mother has been experiencing this to the point where she's been going in for all kinds of tests to find out what's wrong.
-Lauren, NJ
I am so glad you are recovering and taking a moment of rest. I think the cosmic effect of so many falling is just that. Slowing us all down a beat.
-Ra-el, CA
We're thrilled to hear you are doing much better. Your accident gave you an opportunity to receive love and healing exclusively, instead of giving it all the time. If there are people in your circle who are also falling, it is probably because (like attracts like!) they are also generous, loving, giving people who needed to be forced to sit still and receive love, nurturing and healing. Does it make sense now?
Love, peace and blessings,
Marcy, NY
And here is a lovely affirmation from a reader that I would like to share with you:
I, Queen Mama Donna (Insert your name here.)
keep my feet firmly planted
in the love I have for myself
and the love others have for me.
I am always steady on my feet.
When I fall, I fall only into love.
-Rev. Deborah L. Roberts, WI
With blessings of balance,
xxQueen Mama Donna
These are women and men from all over the country and beyond. Is there a common denominator that connects us? Is this a general trend? What is going on?
Well, there does seem to be a connection. I did notice that almost to a person, everyone on this list is either a spiritual practitioner/healer or an artist of some sort. We are all cultural creatives, out-of-the-box thinkers, visionaries, empaths, seers.
We are the first responders. And, with our world so seriously out of whack, there is a lot to respond to these days. We are surrounded by unhealthy, unstable, toxic conditions. There is so much pain and suffering, exploitation and domination on our poor beleaguered planet.
And we tend to take it all in. To take it upon ourselves to fix, to transform whatever/whoever needs help. Whenever. We are overwhelmed. We are exhausted. Is it any wonder we are shaky on our feet?
Here are some of the letters. What do you think is going on?
I am writing because I have fallen twice in the past month, and that is HIGHLY UNUSUAL. I have been feeling less sure-footed and "out of the flow" just enough to have it be on the front burner of my awareness. Therefore, when you wrote that others in your circle have reported falling lately, and it peaked your curiosity, I couldn't resist writing and introducing myself. So, thank you for your New Year reminder of the importance that we be solidly grounded. I am adding that to my intentions.
-Susan, CA
I wanted to let you know that I also fell a month ago in the kitchen of the Harrisburg Unitarian Church. Yes, I do need to be more centered. There were many healers on hand when I fell. I have recovered with much help also. Aren't sisters great? Peace,
-Randa, PA
I know how you must feel since I fell on ice a few weeks ago and tore tendons in my shoulder and rotator cuff. It's been very painful.
-Vince, NY
As you mention the trend of many of us falling, I have to report that my best friend in Florida took a tumble (for no apparent reason), broke her arm and hand in three places and had two surgeries. After reading your note, I stopped and recalled that I've fallen (flat out down on the ground — and once rolling) three times in the past six months. Every time, I've gotten up, stunned that I'd not gotten seriously hurt. Not even a bruise. Blessed be.
-August, CA
Funny thing, the likelihood of falling again, whether spiritually or physically, is sometimes great if you don't watch your footing along the path. I stumble quite a bit myself with my head in the clouds and all. Just the other day I was so taken with the beautiful deer in my backyard, I fell right out the backdoor....geeeez....right smack dab on my keester. It wasn't a graceful fall either. First the ankle went sideways, the elbow hit the siding twisting the arm as I tried to stop myself and then the whole body went into this type of goofy mode as I continued my descent to the concrete. It was quite a sight to behold. Needless to say, I was sore for a couple days but not too bad. Thank Goddess for extra padding in the caboose!
-Kimi, NJ
This Mars retrograde causing accidents, especially when combined with anger, speed and fatigue. It is opposing Pluto for the next couple of days and we all should be careful. I fell on my right shoulder 3 times between April and July and was very injured. I had a slight fall this afternoon as well. I am going to be very careful for the next month, especially the next few days.
-Nan, TX
My brother-in-law in Rochester, NY, fell two weeks ago today and broke 3 ribs. Needless to say, he's been in quite a bit on discomfort & pain. However, your words about people falling reminded me, too, that I've been hearing a lot about peoples' falls. Lots of them. Certainly will pass that "awareness" along & remind folks to slow down and be careful.
-Pam, NY
I also have tripped and fallen a lot of times this year, and I now go downstairs like an old lady. I also fell going up the stairs near the swimming pool and I injured a rib. Very painful and it took 6 weeks to heal! Also still have a lump on knee from another fall! With me I think it is that I forget to lift my legs enough. But it must be a common occurrence in "Older" people, because we got a leaflet through the door the other day, which invited us to come to a meeting (of old age pensioners!) to learn how to avoid falling! Yuck!
-Bé, England
I just fell down the stairs and hurt my back.
-Emma, NY
My friend’s husband, a young man, fell down the stairs on his way to work. He broke is neck and died instantly. What a tragedy.
-dava, VA
I just tripped over my dog and broke both arms.
John, FL
I was so sorry to read about your fall, then I had one, too — in the darkest dark, out checking to see if the car was locked, slipping on a wet rock, going down on my tail bone. Now I am on drugs and a walker for 8-10 weeks and it hurts.
-Jo, AZ
Having taken several nasty falls myself (the last of which entailed a 3-day hospital stay due to fractured ribs and a collapsed lung), I know how painful recovery can be. And I know how frustrating immobility can be! Active minds demand active bodies.
Smoky, IL
Thanks for this post about slow life
Hmmmmmmmm
I just fell last week
Toooooooooooooooo muchhhhhhhhhhhhhh everything
Sending rest & love to usssssssssssssss
-Linda, NY
Funny — I fell walking my friend's dog and sprained my ankle. I put too much ice on it and got burns and also cracked my left pinky finger — now taped together. I am in constant pain and will take months to recover. Yes, my friend also fell on black ice upstate — sad — she is in lots of pain. Don’t know if it is cosmic or what, but so many of my friends have been falling also. Wonder what these falls mean? Please pray for me too. Thanks.
-Naomi, NJ
We are fragile in such funny ways. So strong and then, our bodies... I am taking care of my mother. She fell walking home and fractured her kneecap. She is 89.
-Annie, MA
I too fell the other day, on my knee, outside. Maybe bad weather for priestesses. I'm certain it's karmic.
Marion, NY
I know what it is to fall and sprain/break things, having experienced it myself not too long ago. This may be an astrologically prone time for falling, because Gail's brother-in-law AND her sister both fell within one day of each other, one broke his femur and the other her arm and wrist.
-Charoula, OH
Thanks for reminding us to stay grounded. I, too, have heard about people falling down.
-Sheryll, CA
Very strange point about many others falling. My mother has been experiencing this to the point where she's been going in for all kinds of tests to find out what's wrong.
-Lauren, NJ
I am so glad you are recovering and taking a moment of rest. I think the cosmic effect of so many falling is just that. Slowing us all down a beat.
-Ra-el, CA
We're thrilled to hear you are doing much better. Your accident gave you an opportunity to receive love and healing exclusively, instead of giving it all the time. If there are people in your circle who are also falling, it is probably because (like attracts like!) they are also generous, loving, giving people who needed to be forced to sit still and receive love, nurturing and healing. Does it make sense now?
Love, peace and blessings,
Marcy, NY
And here is a lovely affirmation from a reader that I would like to share with you:
I, Queen Mama Donna (Insert your name here.)
keep my feet firmly planted
in the love I have for myself
and the love others have for me.
I am always steady on my feet.
When I fall, I fall only into love.
-Rev. Deborah L. Roberts, WI
With blessings of balance,
xxQueen Mama Donna
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: LESSONS OF THE FALL
Well, it has been quite a ride since my fall. Or, to be more precise, it has been a non-ride, a total no-go for nearly two months.
To make a long, painful convalescence short, I have had an enforced period of rest and slow living, which I have so desperately needed for a very long time. Which is probably why I fell in the first place. My body really needed to sit down and stay put for a while. For weeks on end, as it turned out.
I have had quite a few nasty falls in my adult life, five this year alone. Some people fall ill when they are overworked and overwhelmed. I just fall. Fall down on the job, as it were. I keep keeping on until I am standing on my last leg which can no longer support me. And so then I fall.
Clearly the lesson is in learning my own limitations. In honoring my own exhaustion. In slowing down for a change. In stopping while I am still standing. In being kind and indulgent to my Self. In respecting my royal prerogative to rest when I feel like it.
Sound familiar?
We Queens live lives enriched by our own hard won sense of purpose, passion and power. We live in an expanded universe of possibility as we strive to fulfill our own best potential, and at the same time further the causes that we promote for the good of all.
We hold positions of influence and responsibility. We are directed and enthusiastic. We are excited and charged. We are also, some of us, driven. There is, after all, so much to do and so little time. We are raring to go. And go. And go. And keep right on going.
My dear, regal sisters, we mustn’t allow ourselves to get carried away by busyness. (Do you hear me, Queen Mama Donna?) It is so easy for the demands of the outer world to lure us away from our essential Selves, to sever us from our own inner center of gravity.
This internal/eternal Self is what gives us our energy, our inspiration and our moral authority. If we lose contact with our soul being, we lose our balance, our perspective and our effectiveness. We lose everything.
We must, for the sake of our Selves, for the sake of each other, for the sake of our entire beleaguered planet, make our Self-care become a priority. Let us take the time to nap, to meditate, to walk under the trees, to stare out the window. Time to be. There is so much at stake.
We must be vigilant Queens, unrelenting in the defense of the sanctity and sovereignty of our own Self-concern — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual — if we are to be fit, wise and worthy enough to rule our domains.
May we enter this new year with both feet on the ground, firmly rooted and steady. May we stand in our center, unshakeable.
To make a long, painful convalescence short, I have had an enforced period of rest and slow living, which I have so desperately needed for a very long time. Which is probably why I fell in the first place. My body really needed to sit down and stay put for a while. For weeks on end, as it turned out.
I have had quite a few nasty falls in my adult life, five this year alone. Some people fall ill when they are overworked and overwhelmed. I just fall. Fall down on the job, as it were. I keep keeping on until I am standing on my last leg which can no longer support me. And so then I fall.
Clearly the lesson is in learning my own limitations. In honoring my own exhaustion. In slowing down for a change. In stopping while I am still standing. In being kind and indulgent to my Self. In respecting my royal prerogative to rest when I feel like it.
Sound familiar?
We Queens live lives enriched by our own hard won sense of purpose, passion and power. We live in an expanded universe of possibility as we strive to fulfill our own best potential, and at the same time further the causes that we promote for the good of all.
We hold positions of influence and responsibility. We are directed and enthusiastic. We are excited and charged. We are also, some of us, driven. There is, after all, so much to do and so little time. We are raring to go. And go. And go. And keep right on going.
My dear, regal sisters, we mustn’t allow ourselves to get carried away by busyness. (Do you hear me, Queen Mama Donna?) It is so easy for the demands of the outer world to lure us away from our essential Selves, to sever us from our own inner center of gravity.
This internal/eternal Self is what gives us our energy, our inspiration and our moral authority. If we lose contact with our soul being, we lose our balance, our perspective and our effectiveness. We lose everything.
We must, for the sake of our Selves, for the sake of each other, for the sake of our entire beleaguered planet, make our Self-care become a priority. Let us take the time to nap, to meditate, to walk under the trees, to stare out the window. Time to be. There is so much at stake.
We must be vigilant Queens, unrelenting in the defense of the sanctity and sovereignty of our own Self-concern — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual — if we are to be fit, wise and worthy enough to rule our domains.
May we enter this new year with both feet on the ground, firmly rooted and steady. May we stand in our center, unshakeable.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: FALL DOWN GO BOOM
One month ago today I fell in my office. I don't know what happened. Falling is a funny (though definitely NOT humorous) thing. One minute you are going about your business and the next, you are on the floor.
As I crashed down, I heard an ominous POP. Luckily, my dear assistant was here. And also luckily, I was able to see my acupuncturist right away. I did not break anything, but I tore my psoas muscle. I never even knew I had one. Never heard the word before. But I learned that it is a very major muscle, one of the largest in the body. It encircles the lower torso like a girdle and connects the pelvis, hips and spine. Essentially, it holds the upper and lower parts of the body together.
The first thing everyone asked was whether I had broken anything. I might have been better off if I had. Apparently, an injured muscle is much more painful and takes much longer to heal than a broken bone. Indeed, the pain in my groin and sciatic region has been excruciating.
I have been seeing my acupuncturist regularly and have received some miraculous energy healing, as well as reiki and homeopathic remedies. These have all helped enormously, but mainly what was and still is needed is total rest. I used a walker for a couple of weeks, which made it easier to get to and from the bathroom, but I stayed in bed most of the time.
Every day brought a small (SMALL) improvement in terms of pain and also range of motion. I am grateful, because I am a zillion times better now, but I still hurt when I step on my right leg and am exhausted by every step I attempt. After 4 weeks, it is clear that this will be a long haul to total recovery of my mobility.
My healers tell me that I need at least another week of serious bed rest and I am glad to comply, because I do feel like I need it. But the good news is that I have been hobbling without the walker and use the cane less and less. So all of the rest and treatments have been working marvelously. And by next week, I should be up and about in some fashion — surely not at my usually intensity, but I will not be bedridden any more!
I am overwhelmed with the tremendous support that I received this month. When word went out about my accident, my spiritual communities — my students, clients, readers, and colleagues came through for me both spiritually and physically in so many wonderful ways.
I received thousands of emails and cards from all across the country as well as Canada, England, Spain, Greece, Australia, and Iceland, which cheered me no end. Also, poems and prayers to inspire me, lots of great advice as to healing modalities, gifts of ointments
and oils and liniments, long distance reiki and healing, and money to help defray all the costs in a month when I could not work.
How can I ever express the depth of my gratitude? Your love and support humbles me and makes me so proud.
I did notice something troubling in all the emails that I have been receiving. So many of you have also been falling of late. An amazing number of you have been tumbling down and receiving a wide array of injuries of your own. Is this cosmic? I don't know. But I want to
suggest that we all be a little more aware, a little more careful, a little more centered as we negotiate our lives.
These are disorienting and troubling times and we need to be solidly grounded. The world needs us to be strong and healthy — ready, willing, and able to care for ourselves, each other, and our poor precious planet.
I send blessings of gratitude and healing to you all. May we enter this new year with both feet on the ground and our ideals and ethics, our prayers and blessings, our best intentions of love and peace soaring above in heavenly majesty.
xxMama Donna
As I crashed down, I heard an ominous POP. Luckily, my dear assistant was here. And also luckily, I was able to see my acupuncturist right away. I did not break anything, but I tore my psoas muscle. I never even knew I had one. Never heard the word before. But I learned that it is a very major muscle, one of the largest in the body. It encircles the lower torso like a girdle and connects the pelvis, hips and spine. Essentially, it holds the upper and lower parts of the body together.
The first thing everyone asked was whether I had broken anything. I might have been better off if I had. Apparently, an injured muscle is much more painful and takes much longer to heal than a broken bone. Indeed, the pain in my groin and sciatic region has been excruciating.
I have been seeing my acupuncturist regularly and have received some miraculous energy healing, as well as reiki and homeopathic remedies. These have all helped enormously, but mainly what was and still is needed is total rest. I used a walker for a couple of weeks, which made it easier to get to and from the bathroom, but I stayed in bed most of the time.
Every day brought a small (SMALL) improvement in terms of pain and also range of motion. I am grateful, because I am a zillion times better now, but I still hurt when I step on my right leg and am exhausted by every step I attempt. After 4 weeks, it is clear that this will be a long haul to total recovery of my mobility.
My healers tell me that I need at least another week of serious bed rest and I am glad to comply, because I do feel like I need it. But the good news is that I have been hobbling without the walker and use the cane less and less. So all of the rest and treatments have been working marvelously. And by next week, I should be up and about in some fashion — surely not at my usually intensity, but I will not be bedridden any more!
I am overwhelmed with the tremendous support that I received this month. When word went out about my accident, my spiritual communities — my students, clients, readers, and colleagues came through for me both spiritually and physically in so many wonderful ways.
I received thousands of emails and cards from all across the country as well as Canada, England, Spain, Greece, Australia, and Iceland, which cheered me no end. Also, poems and prayers to inspire me, lots of great advice as to healing modalities, gifts of ointments
and oils and liniments, long distance reiki and healing, and money to help defray all the costs in a month when I could not work.
How can I ever express the depth of my gratitude? Your love and support humbles me and makes me so proud.
I did notice something troubling in all the emails that I have been receiving. So many of you have also been falling of late. An amazing number of you have been tumbling down and receiving a wide array of injuries of your own. Is this cosmic? I don't know. But I want to
suggest that we all be a little more aware, a little more careful, a little more centered as we negotiate our lives.
These are disorienting and troubling times and we need to be solidly grounded. The world needs us to be strong and healthy — ready, willing, and able to care for ourselves, each other, and our poor precious planet.
I send blessings of gratitude and healing to you all. May we enter this new year with both feet on the ground and our ideals and ethics, our prayers and blessings, our best intentions of love and peace soaring above in heavenly majesty.
xxMama Donna
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