The Sorrow of Demeter and the Trickster God

My daughter isn't speaking to me again. Don't get me wrong; she answers the phone when I call. She hasn't moved away without telling me where she's going (like my son sometimes does). But she answers my questions in words of one syllable, and it seems she always has somewhere else to be after about five minutes. I haven't talked to that set of my grandkids in weeks. I know from this that there are volumes unspoken -- all the things she doesn't feel she can trust me to understand.

When she was little I used to dream of a time when I could talk to her woman to woman, a time when we would be friends. I once dreamed she would find her place in the world and glory in it and be able to share it with me. Instead she has drawn away from me, grown rigid with her insistence on our differences. The sorrow I feel is big -- and grey and dusty like ashes. This is Demeter's tale.

Remember how Demeter's daughter Persephone is bewitched and stolen away by the great god, Hades? She loses herself to the underworld, to the realm of the unconscious -- loses her connection to home and mom. My daughter does that; falling in love with first one then another stranger, leaving me over and over again for a vision as seductive as the Narcissus. I am powerless to stop her. Like Demeter, I cannot find her; she is no longer in my world.

I wander the earth, which I have made dusty with drought. Nothing grows; this suits me. I wander because I am restless, brokenhearted. Relationships with other people's children backfire when I try to make them immortal to suit my needs. Nothing works. Nothing is right.

Then I meet the Trickster God. In the Demeter story, this is Baubo, goddess of the body. Like a Venus of Willendorf, she is all breasts and hips, large and raucous, jolly and irreverent. Demeter -- the story goes -- looks into her womb. What Demeter sees there makes her laugh.

I meet the Trickster God. I look into her womb. What do I see there? The oven of life itself: puppies and kittens, gawky pelicans, smarmy little snakes, the first laborious line of poetry on a crisp new page, a brush full of color gently teasing a taut white canvas. I see a sunrise so angry it echos purple to the zenith of the sky. I see the place where stars are born. I see Wilson in all his fat-tummy, big-footed sleepiness.

This doesn't take away my sorrow. Instead it puts something else beside it. A tiny little seed sprouts fins and swims. I laugh. Then I am free to cry.

It's Lent -- The Monster Locked in the Bedroom

My favorite "Lent" joke was one I first heard when I was around nineteen. It goes like this (from before the era of women priests):

A priest's wife wanted to get it on with her husband. She put on her most sexy nighty and went to him one evening to make her desires known. He looked at her aghast and said, "But honey -- it's Lent." Shocked, outraged, and indignant she replied, "to whom and for how long?!"

The hidden truth of this joke, and why it has stuck with me all these years, points beautifully to a wrong way of engaging in a spiritual discipline. Refraining from something -- denying one's self something -- is often sort of like lending it out. It comes back with interest at the end of the term. Whether it's the decision not to eat chocolate or the resolve not to engage in angry confrontations, giving something up without some deep soul-searching merely insures that it will come tearing out even stronger than it was before, once one lifts the ban. And if there is to be no lifting of the ban, it comes back anyway, ripping through all one's resolve in a blizzard of denial and double-talk.

We generally give up things that we've deemed unhealthy, or things that alarm us a little in their hold over us. It is a good thing to ask, when we give these things up, who are we giving them to -- and for how long.

A Sufi teaching story puts it this way. A man found an ugly ogre rampaging through his house. The clever fellow waited until the monster went into a small bedroom, then slammed the door. He leaned against it, exultant that he had solved the problem. There was just one difficulty -- he had forgotten to bring a key for the door's lock. He had to keep leaning against the door if he wanted the monster to remain inside.

He figured that if he just leaned against that door for long enough, the ogre would fall asleep or grow weak, and he'd be able to run and get the key. Instead the monster seemed to be growing stronger. The man, unable to leave his post for food or water, began to grow weaker. The longer the ogre was confined, the more angry he became. It was soon a matter of life and death. The man believed he would never be able to leave his post without being killed by the trapped monster.

The interesting thing is that the ogre was a prince who had magically been changed into a monster. He had been looking for the way back into his true form when the man had trapped him. Inside the little room he lost all sense of his humanity. He called out to the man in the enraged voice of a monster and the man responded in terror. If the man had confronted him face to face instead of locking him up, they could have talked together and together sought the solution to the ogre's problem.

Giving our addictions, our shameful behaviors, our overarching desires, to the little ego who wants to stuff them in a room somewhere usually winds up in disaster. Generally there is a bewitched prince -- something beautiful, honorable, protective of the Psyche -- hidden within them.

So, how does one talk to monsters in order to draw out the inner prince? Learning the answer to that question would be the right sort of spiritual discipline.

Soul Watering

The little child who has often sought my lap in the house of my imagination has spoken with me. I was sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning once again when she took my head in tiny hands and looked into my eyes.

Small children in dreams are not the helpless innocents of waking life. They are in fact rather like angels -- time bombs, set to detonate no matter what, but often willing to have a few words with us first.

So, somewhat frightened, I looked back. Her eyes were dark like black river stones. "You must tell the stories," she demanded.

A friend of mine preached at my church several weeks ago, and in his sermon he demanded to know if we were a club or if we offered something "saving". I was deeply moved by that question, and couldn't figure out why. What a question! I have been wondering ever since, what is saving? What does that even mean? I heard my grandfather whisper in my head, "save your immortal soul. . ." and over time began to realize that soul-saving is in reality Soul-watering. What nourishes our hearts and sets us on a path of Meaning? What counters our despair and our addictions? What waters us?

The Soul is watered by many things. Relationship is huge, of course. I don't mean relationship with the people with whom one is already intimate. I mean relationship with sunrises -- an understanding that without our respectful and grateful presence, the sun would stop coming up. I mean relationship with the tree in the backyard that has finally gained some ascendancy over the neighbor's bushes -- the willingness to cast our fate with the fate of that rooted being. I mean relationship with the raccoon and the squirrel who search our trash bins and our bird feeders -- a humble acknowledgement that we have taken over their homes. I mean relationship with the scary stranger -- who yearns for community as much as do we.

In the moment of looking into the dream-child's eyes, I come to understand that the single most important thing, the central element of Soul-watering, is Story. Without our myths we are dead. Deity expresses Deity's self through our tales. We are not literal beings.

We need to wrestle with our myths as things that are true. There is a way in which -- yes -- Bear took off his bear suit and came to us in human form. True, Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds and became Queen of the Underworld. And don't we know that Tristan and Isolde still sail their little boat on some choppy sea! The Soul knows the reality of these things. The Soul savors them.

The child and I will have to work out the particulars of her mandate. I'm sure they will be interesting at the very least. Bards and mystics, novelists and playwrights, heroes and strange old women all have stories to tell.

Just Call Me Baba

Wilson Aaron Kunze is two days and two hours old. He is my newest grandson. As did all my other grandbabies, he calls me into relationship by his existence. I am his Baba.

You've no doubt heard the standard grandparent disclaimer: "It's not the same as having children -- you can send grandkids home at the end of the day." I think this is a joke masking what is sometimes an uncomfortable inner reality: It's not the same at all. Grandkids project something different on grandparents than they do on parents -- and grandparents do the same with grandchildren. It seems archetypal. I am not only called into relationship, I am summoned to wisdom, understanding, and unconditional love. Something happens between me and these people who call me Baba. Something kicks in between us.

I don't know if Wilson is lucky or unlucky to have me as his Baba. I am not usually stellar at meeting the summons. I have my moments, thank God. But I also have my crotchety old lady moments, my "leave me alone or I will eat you" moments. I console myself with the idea that this aspect of grandparenting, too, has its archetypal aspect.

Wilson is too young to receive much more than the rudimentary aspects of my ocean of love for him. I can hold him in my arms and hum at him (I tell Rosean I never coo). I can wait for those magic moments when he opens his eyes for just an instant and gives me his newborn infant scowl. That's about it really. Oh, and I can give him a grandmotherly welcome.

Welcome into the world, Wilson Aaron Kunze. May your heart grow big and your arms grow wide. I am your Baba, and I love you.

Friday the Thirteenth

Today is my favorite day -- Friday the 13th. This is not because I am macabre. I honor the day as the special holy day of a feminine aspect of deity. Friday is Freya's day in the old Germanic cultures, and 13 is her special number.

The ancient form of the fairy tale "Snow White" includes thirteen witches instead of four fairies. In that story twelve witches were invited to the birth celebration of the beautiful princess. There were only twelve gold plates, you see, so the king and queen put their heads together and decided simply not to invite one witch.

None of the witches was evil. Witches were healers and midwifes in the culture of the original Snow White story. The thirteenth witch was not a bad soul. She was overlooked, in fact, because she seemed to be the least powerful of all the witches, the least worthy of honor. She was a quiet, unassuming healer.

She did not act out of revenge to curse the princess, either. No, this sleep of 100 year is simply what happens when one ignores the thirteenth witch. It is very dangerous to ignore the thirteenth witch. It can cause dire consequences that last a very long time.

Twelve is a common number signifying completeness. Three sets of four, or four sets of three, it symbolizes a sort of completeness that comes from a diversified, well articulated consciousness. The number crops up cross-culturally as the total of things. Think of the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve directions of Native American spirituality.

What, then, is symbolized by thirteen? It is one beyond the completeness. It is the symbol of newness -- new beginnings, a new paradigm, new birth, new growth. Twelve is static and complete. Thirteen is dynamic and unbalanced. Twelve is made up of all sorts of other numbers: twos, threes, fours. Thirteen is a prime number, only divisible by itself and one.

You can see why the failure to invite the thirteenth witch throws the Snow White kingdom into slumber. The kingdom had failed to invite the new dynamic, the catalyst for change. This is a very bad thing, especially at a birth. Let this be a warning to you -- don't use the gold plates if there aren't enough. Use pottery. Just make sure all the witches are invited.

Freya is the Norse goddess of life. Thirteen is her favorite number because of its catalytic properties. Life always needs the unbalance of the thing beyond completeness, the new thing, the wrench in the works. There is no life without this chaotic element. There is only stasis -- sleep.

How, then, will I honor Freya's Day of the Number 13? What I should do is find something that scares me absolutely out of my wits and then makes me laugh. What better way to honor that aspect of God that is newness and the electric force of life?

These things are hard to engineer, though. My inner ear can't take amusement park rides anymore and horror movies have never been my favorite adventure.

I think what I will do instead is perhaps even more risky. I'll light a little candle on my altar and I'll pray. I'll say to that Freya aspect of God, "surprise me."

Yikes! I'm terrified just thinking about it!

Old Women and Rivers

At the table in the kitchen of the big house in the dream I shared with you in an earlier blog sits an old woman with very large hands. The table is large and white. We are drinking tea and smiling. It is in the early hours of the morning. We don't speak; we simply sit together. I admire her hands as she holds her cup warming gnarled fingers which are expressive and expansive.

Today I have a lump in my throat. I'm not sure what it is -- anxiety, sadness, things unexpressed that coil there waiting to be born. I look at her, wanting to talk, not sure how to begin, what I will say.

She cocks her head, which I now notice is wrapped in a bright scarf of reds, blues, yellows and oranges. She is listening. I listen also. In the distance I hear water and the sharp call of a bird. It sounds like a brook is burbling along out there somewhere. I am plunged into memories of brooks I have walked beside, streams I have fished in, rivers I have loved. Once when I was young I cut a reed from beside a small creek and lay on my stomach in the mosses using it as a straw to sip the ice cold water. Once when I was fishing in a quiet river pool a family of baby martins ran across my boot top as they played. Once I fell in a river, and when I surfaced saw the huge, alarmed eyes of my then-small children who were crouched at water's edge watching where I had disappeared. Fat old rivers, fast racing alpine streams, dilatory creeks snaking through willow wallows, tricklets of newborn spring water -- image after image flashes through my memory.

My friend Paul likes to find the source of rivers. He comes to them where they are still quite young, babies really, little streams struggling through boulder fields in the bosom of some mountain. He follows them back to their birthplace. Some are born in high lakes bordered by glaciers. Others seem to emerge from the rocks themselves, gradually forming from a multitude of trickles into something with a bed and a direction. Still others emerge from alpine springs. Paul likes to look at the tiny place of origin, and likes to imagine the river as it is further along, authoritative, capable, carving out valleys, carrying huge boats on its back, fertilizing farm lands.

When I reach this point in my thinking I suddenly remember my companion at the kitchen table of my imagination. I turn my attention back there, yearning once more to ask something, I don't know what. The old woman has gotten up during my reverie and left. A younger woman wearing an apron is plunking down a mixing bowl, and a child has wandered in, eyes crusted with sleep, to demand silently to be picked up onto my lap and held.

I feel a bit sad, off balance, frustrated with everything I do not know. I lean my chin against the head of the small one in my lap and sigh. Sometimes there are no words, I guess. Sometimes there is just the waiting.

Then I notice that the old woman has left her brightly-colored scarf in a disorderly heap in the middle of the table. I pick it up, and the child and I examine it quietly. It comes to me that I could put it on. Will I? What would that mean?

Every Morning a New Arrival

I have on my altar, leaning up against a driftwood statue of a pelican, this quote from Rumi:

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. . .Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

The pelican is one of my totems. She is the consort of the great ocean, always carressing the undulating waves, finding riches in the hidden world between them. Sailing the air in perpetual discovery -- each day a new arrival -- so I imagine. I imagine the ocean offering her secret treasures that she carries home with her in her pouch, setting them on a window ledge to catch the evening light.

And so am I, pelican to the Soul, in thrall to her exquisite beauty, lifting treasures to my little window ledge at the edge of her vast reaches. Every morning a new arrival.

It is difficult to be grateful for some of these treasures. When I feel bad, it's as though the sun is obscured by fog. Everything is grey. To think highly of a meanness of spirit or of a depression seems so counterproductive. Seldom do I say to God, "thank you so much for making me sad today." Joy on the other hand has such a rare and exquisite beauty. It is like a prism to sunlight, casting rainbows everywhere.

The ocean in her moodiness throws up fog and storm and high winds and sunlight alike. Surprisingly, being counterproductive is often a good thing. Counter to productivity is degeneration, unmaking, decomposition. Decomposition returns things to the earth. It is earth-making -- Humus-making -- Humility-making -- Making of openness and empty places where new things can come to be.

If I can embrace my sadness or my anger as one of the ocean's treasures, I become Psyche's voice of Pathos. I become the foghorn sounding through the mists. I am fogbound, but am not myself the fog. I can then guide the large ships through the dangerous waters to safe harbor. "Oh my God, I'm so depressed," I moan. "Oh when will this terrible fog ever lift?" I howl. And the ships, following my voice, come safely home.

On Watercolor Pencils

Play is a process involving risk. We become so vulnerable when we play. We step beyond the limits of our persona masks. Anything could happen.

Play teaches us. It frees the mind from the limits of the ordinary into deep creative currents.

I have been playing with my new watercolor pencils. I got them with a gift certificate from a friend to whom I will be forever grateful. A little gift certificate to the local art store can be like a free pass on a ride through the Magic Kingdom. Shelf upon shelf laden with glorious things -- creamy papers, richly pigmented paints, soft brushes, fascinating gadgets, markers that blossom in their bins like flowers, rainbows of pencils, stacks of intriguing boxes, pallettes of all varieties and light boxes and easils -- await the caress of eye and hand.

I wandered through the aisles exploring each thing, delighted that one of them would be mine to keep. After the joy of touching and trying, I would get to choose something, something gloriously impractical. Playfulness would extend into the days and weeks ahead.

I chose the watercolor pencils. I liked the idea of drawing with paint. I was also reminded of the watercolor coloring books I had as a kid -- the magic of transforming little dots on a page into a wash of color.

I took them home and arranged them like a bouquet in a mason jar. Then came the time when I could use them. I drew soft lines of pigment along the bumpy surface of watercolor paper, trying different colors side by side and on top of one another. I wound up with a colored pencil drawing. I brushed water over it, and the magic began. A vibrant painting emerged. I did another drawing, fooled around, seeing what mixed well. I tried a few blottings with tissues and cotton. I tried another painting by soaking a sheet of paper in water and then drawing on it. This time thick lines of color appeared. Brush blending and tissue blotting produced all sorts of cool effects.

A few days later I took the pencils for a drive. Stopping here and there, I found myself rendering drawings of scenes around me: intense pinks and oranges became a sunrise with green sky below, a wash of purple with yellow highlights became a field of snow, blue melting into grey-green became sky and distant hillsides. I drew grasses -- more purple and yellow -- and trees -- reds and greens -- and lichen covered boulders -- oranges, blues, pinks.

The desire to render gave way to the urge to language. THIS exuberance of brush explodes at the base of THIS tree, which carries the fireworks, puff, puff, puff, in the lines of groupings of pine needles. The eye leaps from limb to limb, celebrating each burst, until it lands in the soft expanse of sky. A thought, a suggestion, I filed it away like a sentence scribbled on a notecard.

My inner little kid is happy as a lark. My crusty old ego is relaxed and a little more welcoming. Who knows what will come our way now that we are opened to seeing it. All of my internal people look forward together to the next time we can play with the pencils.