Thea & The GreenMan

Excerpted from Thea's upcoming memoir: Returning as Clouds (artist of work above unknown)

Peachy used to read poetry to us girls in the cabin at night before bedtime from books like Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman; The Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Psalms from the Bible. She instilled a lifelong love of poetry and her one summer of love stayed with me for a lifetime.

I turned fourteen that summer in July of ’69. Four days later men landed on the moon as all of us girls gathered lakeside for a “baby boat” ceremony. In the same year the Moody Blues released On the Threshold of a Dream. It was the beginning of my awakening.

The lake was calm and the moon was full on the night of the moon landing, its reflection glimmering on the still dark water. The timing may have been a coincidence, but as I gazed up searching for the man in the moon, like one searches for shapes in the clouds, I knew it was a historical moment and perceived that a barrier was being shattered for humanity. There would be less separating us now; less time and distance, but no less mystery.

Baby boats are magical when they are all afloat and are made from cut off milk cartons with each holding a small candle. The candle boat ceremony was inspired by a Japanese tradition of honoring the dead and was meant to illuminate a pathway for souls to find their way home. It held multiple meanings for us that night. The owners of that sacred land had lost a baby soon after she was born and so it was also an honoring of this soul. It was so beautiful to see all those lights illuminating the water. We are like that, souls that shine for a brief time and need a light by which to find our way home.

As I watched the baby boats converging at the center of the lake, gently nudged by a light breeze, a magical thing happened. My little light began to merge with all of those other little lights beneath a path of yellow moonlight. No longer feeling quite so lost or all alone I became aware that I was part of a much greater whole. Strains of the Moody Blues began to play in my head to the rhythm of the wind and gentle swaying of the boats, Have You Heard. Music, always my saving grace. I looked up in wonder and tried to imagine what the earth must look like from space. There was someone up there who loved me, and now I knew there would be a light to guide me home.

Now you know that you are real

Show your friends that you and me

Belong to the same world

Turned on to the same word

Have you heard?[1]

There is always the need to carry on. – Marjory Stoneman Douglas

I had been writing about my childhood in Miami among the Seminole Indians when news came of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Synchronistically, the autobiography, Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River, lay next to my computer, which I had been using as a reference and for inspiration. Having attended Florida schools through college, Marjory Stoneman Douglas was more than just a familiar name or historical figure. She was a force of a woman who never hid from brutal truths; a writer, poet, environmental activist, defender of social justice and crusader for women’s rights who had an enduring public life and lived to be 108 years old.

Marjory poetically described and fought to protect what is surely the strangest river in the world; the Everglades, a river of grass, and one of the most fragile ecosystems of the American landscape. Marjory was instrumental in helping us to understand why this unique and magnificent landscape was more than just a worthless swamp and why we needed to protect and restore it.

Mr. McKinney walked up to Watson slowly and said, “Watson, give me your gun.” Watson said, “I give my gun to no man,” and fired point-blank at McKinney… -- The Everglades: River of Grass, by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

In contemplating one of the world’s deadliest school massacres it would seem obvious that this is about much more than guns. Anyone capable of a soulless act is obviously mentally disturbed, but the brutal truth is we don’t understand mental illness, really, at least not like it is understood in China as a heart-mind disconnect, or in Native culture as “soul loss.” Shock, trauma and abuse creates a vicious cycle that is damaging to our hearts and results in the inability to decode symbolic language that gives meaning and purpose to our lives. It is why we need writers, artists and poets to keep this symbolic language alive.

Taking away the guns may treat one of the symptoms, but it won’t heal the underlying cause of disconnect from one another and the natural world from which we are inseparable: A disconnect that creates a lethal cocktail of drug and alcohol addiction, abuse, depression, disempowerment, shame and low self-worth. When you add anti-depressants and guns to an already lethal mix – you get incomprehensible violence, destruction and degradation of human and natural resources.

In Marjory’s story, Watson ends up dead, taken out by those who witnessed the encounter. We are the witness to the loss of hope for our future and we must heal from the trauma. Taking action as the students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas are doing has the potential to create a historic movement for citizens’ rights against gun violence. The human landscape is not just a worthless swamp where a swamp creature occasionally crawls out to wreak death and destruction. It is a magnificent landscape worthy of protection and restoration.

References:

Marjory Stoneman Douglas would be proud of these kids, Tampa Bay Times, Opinion Column by Jack E. Davis http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/Column-Marjory-Stoneman-Douglas-would-be-proud-of-these-kids_165737344

Sitting by the Well: Bringing the Feminine to Consciousness Through Language, Dreams, and Metaphor, by Marion Woodman, Audiobook by Sounds True

Resources:

Heal Your Heart: The Fire Element a class with Thea Summer Deer at Wise Woman University

Anthropology can be a pretty heady subject, but fortunately I was introduced to the British social anthropologist, Sheila Kitzinger, and her work as a childbirth activist and author at the beginning of the natural childbirth movement. She had a way of bringing this subject to life and was fabulously witty, progressive and fiercely independent. We met in 1979 when Sheila was promoting her new book, Women as Mothers: How They See Themselves in Different Cultures. My son was a nursing baby on my lap when I first heard her speak. Of the more than 20 books she wrote about childbirth, pregnancy and parenting until she passed in 2015, this one stood out to me as the most culturally significant. Women birth the world and how we see ouselves and are supported in the process directly affects how empowered we feel as mothers to nurture human potential, thus insuring our collective future.

Fast forward 30 years. A little less head shy of the heady subject of anthropology I discover the book, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. This book reveals the long-hidden roots of shamanism, the world’s oldest tradition. It was not only humankind’s first spiritual and healing practice, it was originally the domain of women.

Now, fast forward to the present. A friend shares this link with me: How the female Viking warrior was written out of history. Archeology is a pretty heady subject too, and I am no scientist. But what I do know is that women have always fought to protect their communities and their young. You have only to watch any animal mother to know this. This was true for me when I was threatened with losing my own children to an unjust justice system that valued money over mothering. I found a fight in me that I never knew existed. Try backing a mother bear into a corner and then standing between her and her cubs. This response was never written out of our bodies innate wisdom, we only learned or were forced to override it as an act of survival.

Sheila, from her extensive travels and in her lilting British accent, told many Indigenous women’s stories of birthing their babies into this world: Stories she heard first hand, some enlightening and some heart wrenching. The hardest of the later for me to hear was of the mother who birthed in a concentration camp. Knowing that all of the women in the camp would be killed including her newborn if it were to be discovered – she chose to silence her newborn’s mews with her own suffocating breath in order to protect the potential for yet another future. That future is now. Women are warriors. We are survivors. And we are rising up.

Gloria Taylor Brown interviews Thea on her Goddess Alive Radio Show on Priestessing the Planet. We cover a lot of ground from herbal medicine to music and healing. It was a great interview.  Gloria Taylor Brown is the Producer and Interviewer for Gathering of Priestesses. She has always been a Wild Woman and a Priestess of the Goddess. Her travels have taken her to many wild places, from Alaska to Egypt. She is the author of numerous books. Visit her website MOTHERHOUSE OF THE GODDESS.

The Warrior Goddess archetype is emerging strong and for good reason. We are starting a new Venus Cycle in the Aries archetype of the Warrior Woman. Learn more with Cayelin Castell, co-founder and a lead teacher and facilitator of the Shamanic Astrology Mystery School. She is a leading expert in the field of Shamanic Astrology and celestial timings. She is also the co-founder of Venus Alchemy co-creating with Tami Brunk a profound experience of the powerful Venus Journey, honoring, celebrating and working ceremonially with the Venus cycle as it relates to the story of Inanna. This was the result of more than 20 years of working with the Venus Cycle personally and with clients. Check out this amazing YouTube overview on Venus in Aries: Arise Warrior Women.

The Fierce Feminine is about protecting. She calls to awareness the systems of inequity that keep us enslaved, saying "no" to what doesn't work, and "yes" to what does work. When she has a cause or a purpose she is 100% all in and committed. She is all about taking action and is fiery and fierce. A lot of women are stepping out onto the world stage and into their power to restore the cosmic balance. When the Warrior Goddess archetype is healthy her concern is for the greatest good of all people. She is a Divine Feminine Leader who works with others to create the greatest good for the most people over the longest run.

A Warrior Goddess is a woman who challenges her emotionally wounded belief system that is based on projections, assumptions and false fears (fears of being judged, not good enough, and ungrounded fears), which create unnecessary suffering and unhappiness. It is an internal battle between heart and mind that takes patience, practice, persistence, courage and commitment in order to transform the war-torn emotional battlefield into a landscape that supports and integrates Heart-Mind. The challenge requires sobriety, awareness and clarity that personal freedom is attainable beyond the struggle.

Courage – To question and challenge one’s own beliefs, to continue on the path in spite of life’s challenges, disappointments and failures, to have the self-discipline to self-motivate, to not be controlled by the opinions of others.

Sobriety – Clear headed and discerning what is me and what is not me, not under the influence of the “other”, using common sense and practicing self-control.

Awareness – Perception without interpretation or opinion that allows discernment. Self-awareness is the clarity to know who and what you are. It is presence without projection or self-importance. Takes practice.

Personal Freedom – To love and serve who and what we are called to love and serve, to have the freedom to choose what we want to do when and with whom.

Photo ©2017 by Marion Z. Skydancer