The Sins of the Fathers

When the phone rang 17 years ago, it was my niece on the phone, to whom I had not spoken in 18 years. She called to tell me that her mom had suffered an aneurysm in her brain and that the corrective surgery had left her in a coma. The prognosis was very bad, if she emerged from the coma, she would be a vegetable for the rest of her life. So her children decided to turn off the life support machines and have a memorial service. “Will you come to the service?” she asked. “Of course I will. Where and when is it? Let me know and I’ll be there,” I said, hanging up the phone. My wife had to teach school and my children could hardly remember their aunt, so I called my employer, explained the situation, and prepared to represent the Melville clan at the memorial service. My brother had remarried and, given his intensely negative feelings for both his ex-wife and me, would not be attending the service.

The night before the service I had a dream. It was my sister-in-law as I remembered her from our visit 18 years before. She was beautiful and welcoming, inviting me to embrace her children who were as I remembered them when we visited them in Wisconsin many years before. That was when my mom was dying and had asked my brother, to whom she had given power of attorney over her assets, to purchase airline tickets, so that she could see her grandchildren and her son before she passed over into the spirit world. Being the adult child of alcoholics, my brother was denying the truth, a pattern he had learned from both my parents (I learned it too), and refused to buy the tickets. When mom failed and went into the coma, which she had done the year before in my home, my brother got frightened and, not wanting to displease his mom, sent for our family. Unfortunately mom didn’t regain consciousness during our visit. My four sons got to spend time with their cousins and the adults got to facilitate the momentary merger of the two families.

When I awoke from the dream, it was the day of the memorial service. A thick fog was covering the windows and it was dark, so I decided to shower and prepare to drive across the state. When I got out of the bathroom and was dressing, I noticed the time. It was 2 am. Since I was already up, I packed the car and decided to brave the fog. It never lifted, so I drove about 15 miles an hour and arrived in Auburn about 7 am. I had breakfast and then drove to the address of my sister-in-law’s apartment. As I parked the car, another rolled up next to me. It was my niece and her husband. We had 18 years to catch up on and a family secret to share.

I had discovered what my mom meant in telling me that my great-grandfather Kroll had “married beneath his station.” He was part of the Berlin aristocratic circle. His family had built the Opera House. My mom was very proud of that, but she never told us that the reason her grandfather had immigrated to Racine, Wisconsin was because he had married a Jew. My niece had done the same thing, and converted to her husband’s religion, just like my great-grandmother Kroll had done. The Krolls became Lutherans and disappeared into Wisconsin’s dairy land. When Jews would notice my mom’s features, Phyllis McFadden Melville denied her Jewish background. As Shakespeare pointed out regarding Hamlet’s mother’s words and behavior, you can over do a denial. “Me thinks she doth protest too much.” which points to the truth of the opposite. My sister-in-law had also left the Roman Catholic tradition for my brother’s Protestant faith. The pattern continued, but so did the genes.

Preparing for the memorial service meant waiting for my nephews to arrive. When they did, it was almost like the dream, except they were in their late twenties. The service was almost like a replica of my brother’s wedding, except that everyone was thirty seven years older. And as expected, my brother was totally absent. He didn’t even bother to send a telegram or flowers. It was me and my nephews, representing the Melville clan. I learned that the life-support machines had been turned off at midnight, about the time of my dream. I shared my belief that I had been given the dream for a reason. My sister-in-law wanted me to be there for her children and I was. And I did my best to stay connected for as long as I could. In a family where emotional cutoffs are the norm, that didn’t last more than a few years. I did get to meet my youngest nephew’s wife and children on my way to a Native American Church meeting. He seemed surprised to discover he had Native American genes. He had married a Cherokee woman and they were interested in seeing the tipi, so I took them inside. They didn’t stay for the all night ceremony, but they were very curious.

I did what I could to reconnect the boys with their father. He was very judgmental and saw their mother’s addictions in them and their behavior. His daughter was like him and hence the favored child. She did everything better. Falling in love with a Jewish man was a little tarnishing, but I guess he forgave her for that. (He didn’t know he’s a Jew.) She was the intermediary between me and my brother, who refuses to communicate with me. He didn’t like my influence on his sons, so I guess he made a few gestures in the following years to get closer to them. I tried penetrating his shield a couple of times and talked with his new wife on the phone. My wife and I weren’t invited to their wedding, so for several years I didn’t know he had remarried. I have never met my new sister-in-law. I have spoken to my brother for about 5 minutes for 5 times in the last 23 years. And my sister-in-law did say that she told her husband that he had to forgive me, if he wanted to get into heaven. She reported his words, “I have forgiven him”. My question was, “did he mention what I had done? I would like to know.” She would only say, “It is between him and God. He’s a very private person, and I don’t ask about things like that.”

When my nephew posted a photo of his mom, remembering her passing, I was amazed at her beauty. She had been a runner up in the Miss Sacramento Beauty pageant when she and my brother met. The photo was from the early days of their marriage. Her inner beauty showed through her appearance in my dream seventeen years ago. I reminded my nephew of my birthday surprise at the time and, much to my delight, he contacted me. It was a though his mom were guiding us both from the other side. She knows that I can be there for her son in a way which will make his path easier. I have already shared my belief that there is a profound reason why my brother cannot be a normal parent and sibling. I have come to terms with that and with grace, so will his children.

We are all damaged by our family’s ancestral patterns. We unconsciously act out the “sins of the fathers” over and over, until we wake up to that fact and consciously begin to change the patterns. It is a difficult journey, but it is a family task and it is something my family can do together. Communication is the key, and willingness to learn about the family history is also necessary. One of my sons has assured me that he has broken the chain and is creating his own life and consequences. Hopefully all the Melville clan will be able to do that. Those who succeed model for all of us who attempt.

Being “Outed” in Whole Foods

Still wearing my crimson winter jacket and white stole, I donned my Moroccan hat with its small circular mirrors and entered Whole Foods. I paid for my coffee and éclair with a gingerbread man, a clever paper cutout with a bar code on the back, which my son had given me for Christmas. The clerk was the man I have been gifting baklava and his attitude has become very warm and friendly. He picked up the gingerbread man and said, “So, this is on him? Ok.” and he swiped the man’s back with a laser. I told him about The Big Short, how it’s a must see for the intellectual inside of us, and sat down to eat my treat. (Santa always has dessert first.) After a conversation with a friend in northern California on my magic cell phone, I returned for the main course, also paid for by the gingerbread man.

 
Children are so fun this time of year. They just stare at me in awe. I know it is mostly their inner world being projected onto me, the living body screen, of the unconscious archetypal world. Part of it is picking up the loving vibe I have and part of it is seeing the reality of an old man with white hair and beard dressed in what they believe Santa Claus would be wearing. A girl and her brother, nine and eleven years old, were staring while their mother was looking at clothing. Suddenly she looked up and saw me. I smiled back at her and went to the Deli, where I found a selection of warm winter dishes waiting to be enjoyed. I selected mine and went to the cashier. That’s when I got “outed” by a little boy.
He might have been three years old, wearing a baseball cap and held in his father’s arms, on his dad’s hip, the way I used to carry my boys. The father was distracted with his cell phone and the mother was looking the other way, when I heard a very sweet, small voice say, “Hi Santa.” I smiled back and said, “Hi.” This seemed to shock the parents back into attending to their son, almost as though he had never spoken before or this was strange for him because he was extraordinarily shy. They continued to focus on me as their son was doing. He never broke eye contact with me, nor did he speak again. When I sat down to eat, I could feel the boy’s gaze and turned to notice the parents were continuing to say, “look there’s Santa”, hoping to elicit another word from their son. I remembered the high tech pocket knife which my son had given me was in my pocket. I got up and walked to the father, who was still holding his son. I opened his hand and put the small knife there, saying “This is for Daddy.” Then I closed the father’s hand before the son could see what I had given. I didn’t want the little boy to have a knife, but maybe someday his dad will give it to him.

 
The father’s “Thank you” was in a heavy foreign accent and I thought of where I had seen this body form before. Tall and slender with broad shoulders, the man had a black running suit with baggy pants. He reminded me of my nephew Joseph, whose family emigrated from Mexico. His fair complexion and black hair came from a grandfather who was Portuguese and a grandmother who was Moroccan. Joey looks more like me than most people in the Native American Church, who typically have brown skin. I could see the young father standing before me could easily have been my nephew, except the idea came to my mind that these people might be Syrian. We do have a Coptic Orthodox community here. I went to the Palm Sunday service at Saint Mary of Egypt’s church. Now there’s an ancient Christian tradition to experience in Coptic Greek, Arabic, and English in alternating songs and responses! The mother’s English was very clearly southern Californian. She was more fair, a beautiful family to be sure.

 
As I was finishing my meal, the family checked out and came over to my table. The father and the little boy, still in his Daddy’s protective arms, extended their arms and offered me a cupcake. The father modeled the behavior and put the gift next to my hand and said, “Here, Santa, this is for you.” The boy said nothing but extended his hand like his daddy. I took both cupcakes and said “Thank you” with a big smile. The little boy would not stop staring at me. He looked like he was experiencing some inner miracle. I have been told by others that I have guardian angels surrounding me and this kid looked like he could see them. After the family left the store, I walked up to the children and their mom whom I had seen earlier. They were having their dinner a few tables away from me. I asked the mother if she let her children eat “things like this” referring to the cupcakes. “Yes, I do,” she said. I explained how I had been “outed” as Santa Claus by the little boy and had been gifted the cupcakes by his family. I gave them to the little girl and her brother, whose beautiful kinky long hair and Afro-American skin shined with happiness. The mother was shocked and pleased. “That’s so sweet,” she said in a beautiful smile. The children were grinning from ear to ear.

It feels so good to give and to receive love any time of the year. Kindness to strangers makes us all feel welcome in this Windigo world.

Why are six-pointed snowflakes so important?

It’s funny how little things can be so irritating. During a recent Christmas presentation at Grace Baptist, I was surprised by several things. First was the enormity of the local Southern California church, which reminded me of a small college campus. Second was the rich, albeit plastic, use of Christmas decorations such as faux candles and colorful globes, the size of softballs decorating the walls and plastic trees. No possibility of fire could be encountered in the huge concrete structure. Free tickets had been issued to make sure everyone had a seat, but everyone arrived early and had to wait to get into the church. My hosts decided to go upstairs where we found center seats in the balcony. The third surprise was the size of the hall. It equaled the seating capacity of the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, where I used to hear the Utah Symphony Orchestra perform in the 1960s. Since the Tabernacle is an echo chamber, the best seats were in the front row of the rear balcony and I expected excellent sound.
The fourth surprise was the size of the stage. It held a symphony orchestra, several electric guitars, mandolin, drum set, a choir of about seventy singers and room for single performers, including the pastor of the church. The fifth surprise was the two giant media screens on each side of the stage. My hosts had told me that many of the members of the church worked in Hollywood on movie production, so I was expecting high quality performances. I wasn’t surprised with the professional musicianship. The orchestra was superb, but when the choir joined them, a sixth surprise occurred. High above the stage, where the Baptist Church in Idaho had a hidden baptismal font, this Baptist Church was hiding a choir of children. Wow, I’m sure the idea of angels’ voices heard on high was behind that opening extravaganza. And then the irritating surprise occurred.
The theme was “Finding Christmas” and the pastor acknowledged there were many different understandings about the holidays. We were treated to excerpts of several popular Hollywood movies on the giant screens. Of course the message waiting to be given was the birth of the Christ child and the wonderful gift of love which would follow thirty-five years later. That wasn’t irritating; it was the eight pointed snowflakes being projected throughout the show on the Disney like giant screens. This would probably only irritate a Montessori School teacher like me. We taught our students how to fold and cut snowflakes so they would be realistic. Water freezes around a “seed” of dirt into six pointed flakes of water crystal. Each snowflake is unique and beautiful. And since it was also the celebration of the renewal of the Hebrew Temple (165 BCE), called the feast of lights by Josephus, I was hoping for a few Jewish stars on the stage. A Hanukkah menorah would have been a nice touch, a way of bringing in the theme of freedom and light for the Jewish mother, father, and baby we were celebrating.
But no, there were three enormous five pointed stars made of firm white cardboard, which were illuminated with different colors of light throughout the evening. I suspect this was a way of showing the Trinity without talking about it, which you see in Mormon church architecture as three separate spires joined at the base. Mormons take the three divine forms of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as uniquely separate, co-operative divine beings. They represent a form of Christianity found in the early churches, before Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) to define what all Christians (were to) believe. When I was a child my Mormon relatives were not considered Christians by the Greek or Roman churches, nor by their Protestant splinter groups. It seemed a bit judgmental to me as a child, because my Mormon grandmother was a better Christian than my mom and most of the people I met in the Presbyterian church. I guess the seventh surprise was the soft pedaling of the Baptist doctrine of needing to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The pastors emphasized the incredible love of the Divine Father and Son and how their love was available to everyone. They weren’t concerned with the symbols they were using to attract unbelievers to their form of the truth.
In the ancient world the five pointed star was associated with the Roman Goddess of Love and Beauty, Venus (the Greek Aphrodite). In his classic text A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot said, “the five pointed star is the most common. As far back as in the days of Egyptian hieroglyphics is signified ‘rising upwards towards the point of origin’, and formed part of such words as ‘to bring up’, ‘to educate’, ‘the teacher’, etc. (p. 310).” It should be no surprise to us that the five pointed star would be associated with the Great Mother, with Venus/Aphrodite, and hence with the Greek Orthodox Church’s Theotokos, the Mother of God (Christ). The symbol of the star seen in the east by the three wise men would indicate that the child would be educating people, a teacher, who would bring up new ideas. The meaning of these symbols would be obvious to the ancient psyches of the early Christian believers in the Good News. You didn’t have to read in order to understand the metaphoric meaning of the symbols.
The eighth surprise was after the performance. There was a huge fireplace outside kept burning by natural gas, a delightful place to get warm and have my picture taken. When I shared it on Facebook and spoke about six pointed snowflakes, I also mentioned the fact that Yeshua (Jesus) celebrated Hanukkah. My friend Bishop Lewis Keiser challenged me to demonstrate what had led me to believe that. At first I had to admit that I couldn’t remember the source. It was something I learned teaching The Life and Times of Jesus at Golden West College in Huntington Beach thirty-five years ago, so it was my Kabbalah, my oral tradition. But where was the proof in the Bible? As any modern man stumbling through pages of Gospels would do, I became frustrated and turned to Wikipedia. There was the answer.

“In the Christian Greek Scriptures, it is stated that Jesus walked in Solomon’s Porch at the Jerusalem Temple during “the Feast of Dedication and it was winter”, in John 10:22–23. The Greek term that is used is “the renewals” (Greek ta engkainia τὰ ἐγκαίνια).[19] Josephus refers to the festival as “lights.”[20]

I checked my Oxford annotated Bible to make sure and then sent the information to Lewis. The good Bishop responded with “Great! I learned something, and thanks!” I shared this with my son, who has become a Montessori teacher and is celebrating Hanukkah with his family. They get presents earlier than the rest of the family who wait for December 25th. Now that the Jews and Christians are embracing one another’s beliefs, maybe we could find room to embrace others as well. We all have within us the history of civilization waiting to be acknowledged and be embraced. Carl Jung called that process “individuation”. Others call it self-realization. I think we are taking the right steps collectively and are individually constructing the Temple of the New Religion.

The Counselor at the dinner table

If you know a family member, friend, or lover who is struggling with a diagnosis on the Asperger/Autism continuum, or has been abused in childhood, you probably have seen their symptoms and strategies to deal with post-traumatic stress. These adaptations are usually compulsive attempts to numb the pain of the trauma. Some turn to drugs and alcohol, others to love/sex addictions, and others to acting out what has been done to them. Threats and attempts to commit suicide demonstrate the hopeless feelings of being alone, misunderstood, and being unable to communicate with words. Finding someone to discuss one’s feelings is essential, whether you are the sufferer or the supporter. It is possible to learn better ways of communication in order to get your needs met. Supporters and lovers can adjust their expectations after talking to someone with experience. I have a lifetime of that.

My brother was undiagnosed and because I grew up with him, I accepted him and loved him. He did some strange things over the course of his life which were baffling to me. He was overly possessive of me, chose friends who were replicas of my personality, and married a beautiful woman with addictions like our mother. He divorced and re-married without telling me, his only living relative at the time. He refused to attend his children’s wedding ceremonies because his ex-wife would be there. He rejected his sons because they had their mother’s drug and alcohol addictions. And when I tried to counsel him about all of this, he severed communication with me. He only said that I had always made him feel bad about himself and that he would never let me do that to him again. I was never to call, write, or attempt to communicate with him. He refused to say any more, nor would he talk about what I had done. He didn’t have the social skills to engage in a dialogue with his brother, so it seemed the only recourse was to cut off any emotional interaction by walking away. That was his birthday gift to himself twenty years ago.

Six years later I entered graduate school to become a counselor. That was when I began to encounter and befriend people who were diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome or autism. There seemed to be an instant attraction which was reciprocal. It was as though we were sucked into each other’s energy fields. Almost every person had a brother like me. They felt comfortable, seen, and accepted by me. They trusted me, shared intimate details of their lives with me, and discussed their dreams with me. Some of their family members told me that they had been praying for someone to come along and give their son or brother the attention the father or step-father could not. One dinner with the family brought the unresolved problems up in the space.

The mother was able to support me in opening a dialogue with the step-father about his attitude of emotional abuse and rejection of the 21 year-old son, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in Junior High school. Once the step-father could admit that he was treating the boy the way his mother had treated him and confessed he didn’t know how to love his wife’s son when he came into the boy’s life, the young man got up from his seat at the table. He went to his step-father’s side, but said nothing. He acted out what he needed. Much to everyone’s surprise and relief, the step-father apologized and asked the son if he could forgive him for not being able to love him the way he needed to be loved. The son nodded his head. He did forgive his step-dad. Then the man opened his arms and embraced his son. The younger, normal son, who was also intellectually gifted, smiled and said, “that’s my dad. I knew you could do it!” We all noticed the tears were flowing down everyone’s faces. It was a dinner we would always remember.

Perhaps you are wondering how the counselor gets to be so intimate with this young man and his family. If you are wondering and perhaps judging, then you probably aren’t members of an indigenous cultural system. In Native cultures the healer is inside of the tribal matrix and that paradigm is different from Western European traditions. It is sort of like the first Thanksgiving, when the Puritan refugees from England were taught how to survive by their indigenous relatives. All humans are related within the web of life. There was no harm done that first year and everyone was invited to the Harvest festival. They all shared the bounteous gifts of the land. They sat down and ate together. They probably didn’t realize how different their value systems were, because they were just learning each other’s languages. The English realized that the only way to convert the Wampanoag people was to translate the Judeo-Christian Bible into “wamp”. And that is what they did.

With the arrival of more Europeans who had not bonded to the indigenous people and hence did not regard them as brothers and sisters, the differences in values came to the surface. Families live and work together. They share the earth’s produce and hunt with one another. Indigenous people are aware of their interdependence and stewardship of the land. The concept of ownership of the land was so strange to the natives that they regarded the English as traumatized and crazy orphans of a bad mother (the Queen of England). Only the mentally ill would kill one another over the use of land. Disputes should be settled by council with the wisdom of the elders, not by violence.

Council decisions and agreements could be enforced by trading children, by fostering children, the way the ancient Celts did in Europe. Family implies adoption of new members, when we lose our loved ones to sickness and death. Making relations with others replaces the missing son, brother, sister, or mother. I remember being fascinated by the concept of making relations when people would mix their blood together and become “blood brothers”. Growing up in the far west of Idaho and going to school with Native Americans, it seemed wonderful to be accepted like a brother by my best friend. His family on both sides had indigenous roots and they treated me like their son, as though we were blood brothers. I was welcome at their table and on their farm anytime I wanted to be there. My friend built an airboat from an old airplane engine and we went water skiing on the reservoirs. He taught me to snow ski. We spent most of our time together during early adolescence.

Never did it dawn on me that I too had Native American blood in my veins. Perhaps his parents could tell that I did from the way I fit into their life style and my love of their son. They never said anything about it, but I always felt they enjoyed me like another son. I was experiencing a different paradigm from the one in which I was raised. I really liked it and began to act more from my heart. This created conflict in my family, who loved my friends, but whose boundaries were very different. Oddly enough the other people to whom I felt mutual attraction were the only Jews in our little rural community. They too seemed more accepting of relationship, almost as though they were remembering their indigenous, tribal roots. Of course the missing piece on my part was the fact that they knew my mom’s genes were the same as theirs. Just like my Native American boy friend, my Jewish girl friend treated me like I was one of them. They knew I was their relative and acted accordingly. My parents discouraged me from pursuing these relationships because their values were different.

It took me twenty years to discover my Native American and Jewish heritage. And it took seventy years to discover my brother was an undiagnosed Aspey. I met my first Asperger’s client ten years ago. He was intrigued by my Cherokee Dance of Life. It was very hot on the Puget Sound and everyone who could was headed for the beaches. Many young Native Americans asked me to teach them the dance that I was doing, and the thin blond silent one stuck with it until the end. He stuck to me and my son like glue, following us like a dog (I call him Otter because of that) who had swum out of the ocean to play Cherokee. It turned out he was connected to the Native American Church. He took me home to meet his parents.

His mom taught Hebrew at the Waldorf School and made puppets of the finest quality. She was the one who had been praying for someone like me to take an interest in her son. She was the first Hummingbird woman I met on the native path. She knew all of the local tribal elders and had learned her craft from them. They accepted her and treated her like family, so she did the same with me. She supported me and my work with her son. She treated me like an indigenous healer. She even drove us to the ferry, when I realized it was my young friend’s birthday. I bought him an airplane ticket to fly that afternoon to a Native American Church meeting in California. And I endured my nephew’s judgments when he realized I had brought a mentally unbalanced man into his elegant apartment. Fortunately my daughter traveled to the meeting with us and she calmed him down.

The meeting was for a birthday and the sponsor was similarly angry to have an uninvited guest, who might wreck his meeting. It was challenging. The Chief admitted to my friend in the morning that he was wondering during the ceremony if “we were going to have to put you in a cage”. Fortunately the peyote took care of everything and the Otter had the best birthday in his life. My nephew and I started to travel down different paths after that. He’s Cherokee and I’m Iroquois, related linguistically, the ancient tribe split when the Cherokees went south. My acceptance of the mentally ill to the point of bringing them into the tipi for healing was taking love too far for him. He needed what I was giving, but he couldn’t see his jealousy for what it was, so he rejected the Otter and me in the bargain. He became quite influential in Native American circles after that. He takes care of the fire in the Native American Church. He’s an artist with the coals, perhaps too much of a perfectionist according to his own admission. But he knows that was his adaptive strategy in response to his dad’s physical and emotional abuse. He told us that when he turned thirty-nine. He needed control of his space and I brought chaos in with my unconditional love. I learned a lot about myself in those encounters with the medicine and the relatives.

Peace and harmony are necessary if we are to honor our Mother the earth. She feeds us all. Indigenous people know that. And their healers are very likely to be your aunties or uncles, whom you honor and support with gifts for their services. Within the indigenous paradigm inviting the counselor to dinner and experiencing healing at the dinner table would be normal. It might even be expected. Gifts would likely be given to acknowledge the help and effectiveness of the healer’s presence. That is what happened on the Kitsap Peninsula with my relatives.

And recently I looked backwards in time to find the reason why there were so many Aspeys in my practice. That’s when I realized that it all started with my baby brother. Everything I learned growing up with him has been instrumental in informing my understanding of how to treat people with respect while acknowledging their neurological differences. There is no “cure” for Asperger’s syndrome, nor for Autism, but there are ways we can behave which support our relatives. And there are skills people can learn to help Aspeys feel more accepted by the dominant culture.

Being different is good. Creator made us that way and Creator loves all of his/her people. We can love the divergent and be different, if we love Creator. So let’s try it. Just consider people as mirrors who show us things about ourselves which we cannot see without their help. After all, we are all related. We are all human and loved by Creator. Let’s start there, by trying to see how we are like those “others” who seem strange to our eyes. That’s the first step in spiritual evolution.

Irish Magic, Monsters, and Transformation, the novels of Douglas Nicholas

When cultures collide, themes of transformation are necessary. And what better place to discuss cultural conflict than sometime long passed, like say England around the time of Robin Hood and the Magna Carta. Opening up to a wider audience, the historical novels of Douglas Nicholas bring a little magic and horror into the stories of that transitional time. And who might be the displaced cultural heroes and heroines at such a time long ago? Why the Irish Queen Maeve and her granddaughter Nemain are hiding among the English as musicians and healers, that’s who. Maeve is a warrior chieftain, who goes by the name of Maggie. Both she and her granddaughter are priestesses in the ancient cult of the triune Celtic Goddess Maeve. Often referred to as the Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess is maiden, mother, and crone, sort of like the Christian trinity of father, son, and holy spirit. And of course there is the delightfully confusing background of the Vikings, variously called the Angels, the Saxons, and the Normans who are edging into Christianity.

Three books comprise the story of Maeve and her gypsy like troupe. The viewpoint is that of the youngest member of the troupe, a Saxon boy called Hob, who was orphaned and raised by an old Catholic priest. Maggie’s troupe rolled into town and she chose Hob (Robert) as her apprentice. The old, nearly blind priest trusts Maeve with the life of his ward because he’s an excellent judge of character and knows she is a good woman, who will teach Hob how to survive in the world. Maggie’s other follower is her devoted warrior/lover Jack Brown, who survived a Crusade to the Holy Land. That’s right, the men are believers in the new religion. But there’s something very odd about Jack. He can’t speak much because of a wound to the throat, which he received on that Crusade, actually a bite made by a very powerful and strange animal. He might have died except for the

Knights of the Temple, whose war horses trampled the beast as they rode down the caravan’s Saracen attackers. Unfortunately for poor soldier Jack, the beast’s bite transformed him into a bear like creature.

As you might guess, this is where the shape changer motif is introduced. Bears kill anything in order to eat and humans are just as delicious as venison. For a Christian, being possessed by a demonic spirit is a fate worse than death, so Jack hunts for a healer of extraordinary fame and power. He finds Maggie at a fair and she finds him very attractive and strong, the ideal companion for a warrior queen in exile. So she uses all her powers with magic and herbs to push the beast deep inside the man and hence tame it. Of course the man is eternally grateful for being restored to the human tribe. In all three novels there are very dark forces at work and the Church hierarchy finds it necessary to use Maeve’s skills to defeat the evil.
In Something Red the story begins for the boy Hob, who leads the ox which pulls the main wagon. There are three animal helpers, an ox, a mare, and a donkey which pull the three wagons. The women sing and play the Celtic harp, Jack the Irish drum and Hob the harmonium. Maeve has taught them all to play. That’s how they earn their way through the English countryside, by singing and making music so people can dance in the inns or by the campsite. They also heal people. They are the traveling medics of the time and are adept in their pharmacology and technical skill. By adding the gore of a series of mysterious murders which seem to be following the troupe, Nicholas heightens the suspense and tension. The history of the times is illustrated by in depth descriptions of the travelers and the people they meet, not to mention the castles and countryside of the time. There is something monstrous present, but it is subtle and eludes the powers of Maeve and Nemain. Ironically it is always the eye of the hawk, the boy’s attention to detail, which resolves the puzzles in each novel.

In Something Red the troupe deals with an ancient shapeshifter, a fox. They join forces with the Norman nobility in dealing with this werewolf like creature. In The Wicked it is an ancient vampire and his wife. In Throne of Darkness (also called Hounds of Hell) the problem is a Moroccan sorcerer and his were-hyenas, who interestingly enough have been hired by the infamous King John of Magna Carta fame. Hob represents the old Viking culture, the Saxons, who conquered Briton by defeating the Celts and the Romans. He is one of Robin Hood’s people. Jack might be an Angle or a Saxon, one of the older Viking races which converted to Christianity. Only Maeve and Nemain are true Celts of the old religion and these warrior queens work with their male lovers to rid the countryside of the monsters. The series is an interesting and exciting way to educate the reader about puberty, adolescence, marriage, commitment, and life in the thirteenth century. And the clash of culture is a recurrent theme as well.

The books favor the old Irish traditions of Maeve and her people over the Christian and the Moor. Indigenous cultures are usually matrilineal, as they were at the time of Mohammad, but warrior males change all that and obliterate their own history, as did the Jews. We find it easier to see and understand if we have an indigenous background, as most Americans do. Strong women and men make for a strong story line and both are needed to combat the Dark. This is not really about the past, it is about the eternally recurring patterns of human psychology, how our unconscious animal selves can easily surface when they are not acknowledged and cared for. Maeve is the symbol of the Queen Goddess who loves all of life and keeps everything in balance. She is the gateway of life and death through which all must travel.

It’s All Good

I first heard the expression “It’s All Good” about ten years ago. I had just been seduced by a younger lover, who wanted to blame me for a delightfully fun sexual adventure. By denying their part in the seductive dance, the younger person could deny their feelings of desire for intimacy and deny responsibility at the same time. My shocked look of disbelief occasioned the other’s reply. “You seduced me. But it’s all good.” The judgment was dismissed with a ‘but’. It also meant they didn’t want to discuss the process either. “Let’s just accept what happened in the moment and move on,” was the translation. So I had a choice, either fight about it and take a stand, it was mutual desire, or accept the peaceful comfort of loving arms around one another. I chose the latter, but at what cost?

I have often wondered about that decision as the expression used by my East Indian friend has worked its way into the New Age vocabulary. Generally speaking I find its use hasn’t changed. “It’s all good” is appended to any situation which is totally unacceptable to the speaker, but who intellectually thinks she ought to feel differently. Often they will argue that the dualistic world of opposites (like good and evil) is ultimately illusionary. If all is one, there are no opposites. It just appears to be bad from the dualistic standpoint, but when you get above and beyond that illusion, one realizes “It’s all good.” The irony here is that such a statement is equivalent to “It’s all bad.” Both expressions are meaningless in modern English. In order to learn the use of judgment words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ there has to be a clear distinction between the two. Of course this is culturally determined, but in whatever language you speak, the distinction is based on some criterion. The criterion need not be made explicit. Children learn how to use the language and they, in turn, teach it to their children. Some things are good and some things are not. Some things feel pleasant and some are not. Some are painful, and some are not.

But if you want to hold onto the “It’s all good” in your spiritual practice, then some mental gymnastics are in order. Exactly what made my lover’s rejection and her abandonment of me “good”? I am told that it was a lesson I needed to learn and that if I can look at the experience in a different way, I will see that what seems bad is actually good, in the long run. And what if I can’t look at the pain of separation as a good thing? What if I react like all mammals to separation with howls of despair? Is that good? Is the experience of pain a good thing for the sufferer? And is the opiate which alleviates the pain a good thing as well? Even if it leads to addiction, is it “all good”? There seems to be a blurring of the language here.

Of course there is an advantage to being mindful about the experience of separation. It can lead me to a more conscious awareness of patterns, my patterns, and how they started in my childhood. I can become aware of how I am attracted to people like my caregivers for love, support and intimacy. I can learn to see my mom and dad in the eyes of my lover.

Eros and Aphrodite

And that’s good, but it’s also bad, because the pattern of attachment to the parent is always the same. I get to be close, intimate and held by loving arms. I get to give and receive sexual excitement and touch. And I get to be abandoned by my lover, just like my parents did to me, over and over again. I suppose it’s all good, if your parents were always supportive and loving, never left you, helped you grow into a strong, self loving individual. But that’s not how it worked for me. Yes, it did eventually force me to see a psychotherapist, and that was good.

I learned over the next six years of working with her that I could articulate my feelings, recognize relationship patterns as they emerged, and with her help, consider changes in my personality. It wasn’t easy or pleasant most of the time. It was often very painful feeling what I had stuffed in my unconscious closet. But it wasn’t as scary to open the door and look at what was in the closet, because I had a loving witness beside me. Yes, my therapist taught me how to lovingly look at the dark, terrible secrets I had been hiding. She was as non-judgmental as possible, but she never said “It’s all good.” Often she expressed how frightened or alone I must have felt, when I shared another story from my childhood. It wasn’t good to be abused by my parents or their friends. My uncles’ cruel remarks were hurtful. My therapist validated my feelings. She didn’t agree with my dad that I should just “suck it up” and not cry. Men do cry, it actually heals us, physically and emotionally. But the healing isn’t in the awareness and the expression of feeling.

Well yes, it is begun with awareness and expression. But the caring witness is the key to healthy change. Her limbic resonance with me made it possible to change me. As Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon (all MDs practicing and teaching psychiatry at UCSF School of Medicine) asserted in their book A General Theory of Love, (2000)

“Psychotherapy is as specific as any attachment. . . a patient attaches to the therapist he has. . . a therapy’s results are particular to that relationship. A patient doesn’t become generically healthier; he becomes more like the therapist. New-sprung styles of relatedness, burgeoning knowledge of relationships and how to conduct them, unthinking moves in the ballet of loving—all shift closer to those in the mind of the healer [whom] a patient has chosen. (p.186)”

Alice Miller

And that’s how it works. We learn new tricks by hanging out with healthy elders. We do become more like them. It often takes several years to establish the trust and love in the relationship to make needed changes. And often the patient educates the healer. I would never have discovered the work of Alice Miller had it not been for one of my clients. And ironically, she was recovering from a decade of living in an East Indian ashram, where she had unconsciously run into the arms of a man, her guru, who was emotionally exactly like her father. I was the helpful witness of her growth over a five year period. We both had to encounter our patterns in that process. And fortunately for me, I had my Jungian therapist with whom to confide during that period. He helped me change my attitudes toward lovers who were like my dad and mom. He provided the “good enough” fathering that my first therapist had begun. She was the “good enough” mother, who helped me grow beyond the end of my thirty year marriage and the painful suffering that that separation created.

With the help of the plant medicines which I discovered twenty years ago, and the resulting spiritual communities and their ceremonies, I have finally grown into the wise person I longed to become. It has been an interesting process, but it certainly hasn’t been “all good.”

The Trickster did it again.

Having just finished a little story for my blog, I hit “publish”, not noticing to which blog it would be posted. The Coyote had the last laugh, but I think my unconscious wanted more coverage, so here it is again.

When my brother tried to find my new home, which isn’t on the GPS, he couldn’t figure out where I was. So he suggested I put some kind of a marker, like an address or image, out on the white fence to let people know that they had found me. He wondered if I were really becoming a shaman. “They are hard to find and they usually have a datura tree growing outside,” he said. I laughed, and said, “turn around. There’s the datura growing beside the cactus. It’s a local resident of the desert canyon country.” We had a great visit. He brought me a juicer for the healthier man he wants me to be. After he left for home, I started wondering where to start. My favorite modality is collage. It’s that cut and paste thing I love from childhood which allows the unconscious to speak. After meditating for a few days, I began creating a “shingle” for people to find my home. I had a great time creating this collage.

I sent a copy to my friends and family.

Here’s the Raven’s response. I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Quite a shingle, I’d say. What will you call it?

Shaman’s Collage-in-the-Time-of-One-Love-Free-Admission-to-Psychedelic-Mother-Mary’s-Greek-Festival-of-I Ching-on-Santorini-amid-Fields-of-Daffodil-and-Clover?

Thank god you kept it simple! I might have driven by without a glance.”

What’s wrong with expressing my feelings?

Repressed feelings can make us sick, emotionally and physically. Expressing our feelings in creative ways can transform the process and lead us from dis-ease to balance. That process might start with confession to one’s friend or counselor that there is anger, pain, or hurt which keeps bubbling up from the unconscious. Expressing the pain and remembering the situations which caused the hurt feelings removes an accumulating “free floating anger” from attaching itself to other hurtful sources. Being abused emotionally and sexually by one’s grandfather during childhood and adolescence could create a lot of pain. If the child can safely express the pain to some caring and understanding adult, some helpful witness, the object creating the pain can be recognized and labeled. Even when the witness can do nothing to change the child’s situation, being listened to and believed has a beneficial result. It creates a sort of resiliency and belief in the possibility of love.

But what happens when there is no witness and one’s confessions are not believed? We learn to repress our feelings because expressing them leads to more and more abuse. We shut down and find short term relief in alcohol, sex and drugs, which numbs the pain. The rage may attach to objects in the environment which are unconsciously associated with the source of the pain. The molested boy who can’t out his military grandfather and his black operations friends might try to find a way to adjust. Although he feels weird by being groped, he learns important skills from the Navy Seals like life-saving, swimming, and the importance of team work. He might even join the military and continue the genetic warrior lineage. This can be confusing of course, because it normalizes the culture of closeted homosexuality and his own ambivalence toward men. His repressed rage toward his grandfather and the good old boys can float in the unconscious and connect itself to new, similar objects.

As an adult in midlife such a man could easily find himself working with gay men to whom he is attracted. And as long as the team is supportive of the guy’s needs, he will continue to be ambivalent about their sexuality. He likes the attention and the company. But when they start being perceived as “just like my fucking grandfather” the rage gets attached to a new object and can be extended to all gay people. From a gay friendly guy emerges the long repressed homophobe.

Expressing his rage about gays and remembering all the times he was molested by the grandfather and his military friends is a step in the right direction. It brings the volcanic feelings which can become violent to the surface. Those feelings can be transformed through art, music, dance, poetry, or a great screenplay. Allowing the hurt to be seen, to be witnessed, on paper or the screen starts the process of transformation. It is amazing to watch this process in oneself and in others. Balance is slowly restored and we can feel like we are co-creating our destiny with the universe. The anger towards the grandfather is no longer generalized, no longer transferred to gay men in general. That one gay man who rejected me might now remind me of grandfather’s rejection and I can let it go. I can forgive myself for allowing someone’s judgment to affect me. I can love myself in the ways I wanted to be loved by my parents.

That’s the positive path of transformation, but what of the negative one? It starts in the same productive way by expressing feelings of hurt and anger. Remembering the people and situations which created the pain and the resentments we have toward them is the next step. But if we don’t follow the confessions and realizations with some artistic, creative transformative process, we get stuck in the victim modality and the addiction to our rage. We recite the litany of abuses and how much we hate those people who, with a little love and kindness towards us, could have made a difference in our lives, but didn’t. Round and round I go reciting all the pain and hurt and rage and don’t notice how terribly negative I have become. Strangely, I also discover people, who listened with compassion and concern, are no longer returning my phone calls. What’s wrong with them? I wonder. Did I misjudge them? Were they really caring? They are ignoring and rejecting me now, so maybe they never were really there for me in the first place. Maybe they are just like all those other selfish, unfeeling people who abused me. Now that’s a sobering thought.

Here’s where the magic mirror is needed and where it appears. I won’t listen to my friends or family, they are the abusers and I am the victim. So I have a dream, a very disturbing dream. I am bullying people and enjoying it when they submit to my rage. I become sadistic and force myself on them against their will. I bind them with ropes, drug them and sexually have my way with them as they cry and plead for mercy. All of this violence makes my penis hard as a rock and no matter how many men and women I fuck, I never feel satisfied. I awake in a cold sweat. If I have a therapist (which is unlikely), I call and make an appointment to be seen as soon as possible. The magic mirror has reflected the monster which I have become. Of course I never do these things in real life, I am the victim.

The helpful witness is needed and if they can interpret dreams symbolically, I will be encouraged to reflect on my abusive way of treating people. When I can admit that I have become the perpetrator, emotionally beating up people with my constant complaining, I can begin to understand the negative path I have taken. My expression of feelings has created a cycle of abuse, much like the re-traumatization I experienced, only now I am getting high on the adrenaline rush I am creating by retelling the traumas. This is a self perpetuating cycle. I will probably resist any suggestions to “change the way I talk” about things, until I can see how the dream has mirrored the symbolic effect I am having on people. When that happens I might begin to see how my words are the ropes with which I bind my listener, and my rage, the rock hard penis with which I rape them. I might get lucky. I could admit this picture and acknowledge that the dream was a gift, albeit a very unsettling one. I am going to have to let go of seeing myself as simply the victim in my life’s drama. Nothing is set in stone and I can change, if I want to, I can go back to the positive path, if I can find a way out of purgatory. Going down the path to self-destruction has created consequences. No one wants to listen to me anymore, nor will people help me. I can’t figure this out on my own. There are too many challenges. I will have to find a creative way out of the pit.

The inner helper is always available, the Dream Maker, who showed me what I have become. I just have to go take a nap and allow myself a dream, one which will show me a way out of the pit of negative self talk.  Better than that, I could find myself a Jungian analyst with whom I could share my dreams.  But that would meant taking responsibility for my life and entertaining the possibility that I am not (always) the victim.  What would I have to give up, if I did that?

The Bitter Cup: Ayahuasca – beware the hand that serves you

The Bitter Cup: Ayahuasca – beware the hand that serves you.

via The Bitter Cup: Ayahuasca – beware the hand that serves you.

Teflon Coating

When I called Raven, I told him that Krishna didn’t like the article. “He thought I was delusional and he was cutting me out of his life.” The Raven laughed, and said “I liked that article. The wolf, the jackal, the fox, these guys are lining up to reject your writing. They really don’t know who you are, do they?” “Well,” I said, “I had an idea it might turn out this way, when I told him how the exorcism went. Remember how the Dark Angel was headed toward the Light, about to merge with it, when I looked away? I wanted the Vampire to freely choose to leave. We were hiking that first day. I had his bamboo walking stick. You won’t believe what Shiva said. He looked right at me and said, “I’m glad you didn’t [force him]. I wouldn’t have had anything when I was on the streets, if you had taken him away from me.” “Wow, He said that?” cawed the Raven, “he thanked you for letting him keep the Dark Angel? Really? That’s deep shit, Eagle.” “Yep, that was before our trip to the hot springs, sort of the foreshadowing, if you’ll forgive the pun,” I said. “No problem,” responded the little black eagle, “you’re the only person I know who answers rhetorical questions, so why would a little foreshadowing hurt? Is that like foreplay? Is that what vampires call it, foreshadowing, just before they consume you?” “I think that’s a film. What we do in the shadows. That was hilarious. We’re not going to eat Stu, right?” When I scooped up the lonely and homeless Goose Boy off the winter streets of Santa Barbara, he called me Gnome Eagle. He had to live out of my car, because my spirit son, the paladin/white wolf, with whom I was living, refused to have Shiva set foot on his property. He regarded his younger “brother” as a thief, conman, and a seducer. As a brother he had welcomed Shiva the year before, had loved him, embraced him, and watched him. But the white wolf had daughters and he soon drew a line around his home and family. He was a devote Roman Catholic and saw Krishna as nothing but trouble, once he got to know him better. The handsome, graceful dancer could charm people. His psychic abilities were intense and he knew how to get inside your head. He would bend down like a Teutonic warrior god and hug you warmly, pulling you close. I felt like the gnome who fed the feral cat. I think gnomes usually avoid cats, but I’m not sure. My granddaughter sees me as a gnome. And with my long beard I do look like Santa. One of my Israeli friends even calls me “Papa Smurf”. My Santo Daime brothers and sisters have seen my eagle side as well as the gnome. And Shiva has felt the eagle’s talons. Once I had to back hand him, when he grabbed my face and turned it toward himself. He was insisting he knew what I felt better than I did. His timing was very bad for a god. I was driving a two lane mountain road when he turned my face away from the road. He could easily have killed us both with that gesture. My therapist summed it up when I told him the story, “well, we knew he was a sociopath. Now we know he’s a psychopath!” The wise doctor was great at labels. He helped me see a lot of my patterns. He also thought I was a natural born healer, but doubted Shiva wanted healing. He respected my ability to give love unconditionally and hoped I wouldn’t get hurt too often. It was a difficult learning curve in those days. The inner child part of me thought that Shiva might like seeing himself as Krishna, since he once told me he was divine. “Look in my mouth. Can’t you see the Universe?” he opened wide as he told me. He insisted I look into his mouth as proof he was Krishna. When I didn’t affirm his divinity, he acted like I was deluded, when I couldn’t see the truth. I took what he said symbolically. For me it meant that he was merging with the divine archetype (Krishna) and we were in for a difficult time. The boy’s ego was dissolving in the Collective Unconscious. Sometimes he spoke like a medium, as a channel for the god(s), and at other times, he embodied the Dark Angel. Later he would wake up and be the beautiful soul with the horribly abused childhood. I kept holding onto the belief that he could choose to grow stronger and might one day feel good about himself. That was just before he disappeared again. He was on his way to take a bite of the Big Apple with that divine mouth. The Raven swallowed down the story. He watched it from the beginning, marveling and laughing. Ravens have an eye for shiny objects, so I ended my tale with what happened when I tried to give Shiva my wrist watch. Back when he was Krishna, he told me, “you should give me your watch.” I wouldn’t do it. That was eight years ago. But this month I decided to offer it to him. “You said you wanted it, remember?” “Yes, but that’s when I thought it was a Rolex. It doesn’t fit since I’ve gained weight, so thanks anyway.” He had given me his walking stick, a very generous offer, cut from the neighbor’s bamboo garden no doubt. He remembered how I always carried a redwood staff on hikes. They come in handy. Redwood is extremely strong and reliable. It doesn’t burn easily and it’s flexible enough to use as a pole vaulting stick, as well as a staff to keep snakes away. “So what happened to the watch?” asked the Raven. “I gave it to the Buffalo. He thought it was timely.” “Hum,” mused the Raven, “like your writing no doubt, slippery as a Teflon neck. Well, congratulations. I don’t know many people who get rejected by vampires. I guess he thought you were good for another meal, Eagle, but just couldn’t get his teeth into the coyote under the new coating. Ha, ha, ha. Great story. He thought you could afford a Rolex. Now that’s delusional.”