WEAVING THE CONNECTIONS

On December 2, 2005, I attended a presentation by Dominican sister Miriam Therese MacGillis, the co-founder of Genesis Farm, an ecological learning center located in New Jersey. Her talk was entitled: “Reopen the Christian Mysteries in Deep Time: New Cosmology, New Perspectives.” Miriam was very forthright in stating that she was not there to attempt a resolution to the tension existing between the Universe story—with its 13.7 billion year history, in which the human has been present for a “mere” 2 million years—and the two-thousand-year-old Christian story. She was clear, however, that she believed in the value of both stories and felt strongly that something is coming into awareness—something we cannot yet define.

In the meantime, how do those who strongly feel the tension (of holding both stories) function on a day-to-day basis? I offer one path in my book Women, the Earth, the Divine in the chapter entitled “Living the Earth-Centered Future Today.” My first suggestion is that we examine our value system and ask the following questions. Is it based solely on individualism, competitiveness, domination and consumption? What is the place of community, co-operation, non-hierarchical relationships and sustainability—living in a way that provides enough for ourselves and for future generations? Secondly, I suggest that the way into the future calls for an ethic of care, one that would recognize the intrinsic worth of all that is, and would be grounded in the Earth as both nurturer and teacher. Thirdly, such an ethic of care would raise for the human the issue of transformation. A person could readily enter into the transformative process whoever and wherever she or he is—and with what seems to be the most obvious and/or the most urgent at the time. In this way, we all could tap into the regenerative power of the Universe itself. We would discover that by transforming ourselves, we would simultaneously transform the Earth. In religious terms, this experience of the unity of all has largely been limited to the mystics. In our own time, however, we can all share the experience—through science with its story of the initial great flaring forth. As I have stated many times before, we are all recycled stardust. The transformative process, however, does need to be grounded in the particular place in which we live. And so, fourthly, I suggest that we need to know and love the other animal species with whom we share our home, as well as the rocks, soil, water, winds, and plants. We need to understand how we all are affected by seasonal changes; we need to experience our interconnectedness in our common Earth journey.

Looking back on human history and the changes that have taken place in our understanding of the role of the human, I cannot help but feel that each age is given that which it needs to bring meaning to its given reality—the search for meaning expressed through such existential questions as: “where did I come from?” or “why am I here?” We have been given a new common story—the scientific story of the origin of a Universe born 13.7 billion years ago—as contrasted to the many creation stories most religious traditions have developed. My hope is that we use this story to create a world we will want to leave to all of our children.

It is now only a few hours before midnight, when the great bell of St. Stephen’s Cathedral will greet the New Year. The city, flooded by more than half a million people, natives and tourists from around the world, will resonate with firecrackers and light up with fireworks. Revelers with bottles of champagne in their rucksacks will climb the snow-covered hills of the Vienna Woods and cheer the New Year from the top.

Now, at the end of 2005, I recall the time when Eleanor and I met in the sign of Sophia at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1993. Eleanor, then based in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and I, from Munich, Germany, had been prompted by a deep spiritual need. We had both become involved in the research and rediscovery of the forgotten feminine aspect of Divine Wisdom and we were there to present papers. The following year Eleanor invited me to her home to present a one-day seminar on Sophia and there I met Alayne. The group of women assembled was wonderful, and energy ran high as we tried to envision ways to make Sophia meaningful in our concrete lives.

As I attempted to follow the traces of Sophia in Christianity and in non-Christian religions, I was greatly inspired by the early research of American women scholars, feminist theologians, historians, sociologists, psychologists, eco-feminists, archaeologists, etc. A spirit of mourning over the loss of Sophia had given way to the joyful rediscovery of the Feminine Divine and her interaction with humans (especially women), nature and the planet. The 1980’s saw a reawakening of the spirit of Sophia that was exhilarating. A “Sophianic Movement” swept from California across the continent and over to Europe. Sophia seemed to be in the air. Little girls were named Sophia, and newly-founded centers and institutions assumed her name to invoke the blessing of the divine spirit of wisdom—it was a Sophianic decade.

Since then, this spirit has been affected by a general backlash—but it has not died. It has been behind many quiet changes and achievements—as the motor of the worldwide struggle for women’s rights, the ecological agenda, the gradual, almost imperceptible shift of our concept of the Divine. It is, as the great Russian sophiologists put it, the “fluid” which mediates between heaven and earth, God and creation. As Eleanor has pointed out, there is space today for every individual’s “own spirituality or unique relationship with the Divine.”

At the heart of the paradigm shift is the linking of undogmatic freedom to our shared aspirations and goals. In Beijing this spirit came alive, and it has not been lost. The foundation of the Values Caucus at the UN and the Earth Values Caucus bear witness to its hidden dynamic. Here at the UN headquarters in Vienna, however, we still seem far away from this spirit. Even in the Committee on the Status of Women, the word “spirituality” is an un-word. We are primarily concerned with women’s rights—drafting statements, spending too much time quibbling over words, etc. I often come away dispirited. And yet, we need the information passed on in these meetings, the briefings by invited experts—our sense of reality is sharpened. For those who cherish Sophia, there are new ways of prayer and meditation on the state of the world—a creative and uplifting process, even if one cannot share it with others.

Several years ago, I came across a Tibetan mantra, an invocation of Tara, the Tibetan version of Sophia: “Om Tara tuttare ture svaha.” Specialists tell me that this is not proper Sanskrit, but this is how it has been handed down for centuries. (The mantra signifies Tara’s holy body, speech, and mind, as well as offers the essence of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths). It works miracles for me. Its energy is at the heart of every enterprise of peace and healing. It penetrates walls and the paralysis of mind and heart that gets in the way of everything C:WED stands for. With the help of Tara-Sophia these will not stand in the way forever.

I look at the photograph of the still intact Twin Towers that Eleanor gave to me during my visit last year. She asked me to take it, as it was too painful for her to see. Indeed, the collapsing towers, the destruction of thousands of human lives, changed our outlook on the world. More recently, the tsunami and hurricane disasters struck. Three million people in Kashmir were made homeless by the worst earthquake within living memory. Sophia-Tara wants us to consider all of these—and also starving, genocidal Africa, or the millions of women sold into prostitution by unscrupulous dealers in human trafficking, or the thousands of young girls still submitted to the trauma of genital mutilation.

This is too much for the mind to hold—enough to daunt the spirit. But another year is coming—and Sophia is still there.

The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine is dedicated to exploring the parallels that exist between the imaging and treatment of women and of the Earth, and how our images of the Divine are related to these parallels.

We began by exploring these relationships within the context of our own tradition--the Christian. While we continue our exploration in this tradition, we have also engaged people of other traditions such as the Buddhist, Goddess, Hindu, Indigenous, Jewish and Muslim. Our work is made available through talks, workshops, writings and retreats. The immediate purpose of the Center is educational, while the ultimate goal is the healing of the Creation.

The founder of C:WED is Eleanor Rae, Ph.D., author of Women, the Earth, the Divine, President Emerita of the North American Coalition for Christianity and Ecology and founder of the United Nations Earth Values Caucus.

As each of us waits, along with the horses, the great blue heron, the salmon, the wolves and the butterflies, for our little portion of days to be used up, our galaxy drifts westward toward the stars of Hydra Centaurus super cluster pulled by some unknown force. On the margins of this convoy, children and puppies and cubs are still being born. The sun and the moon still travel with us across the sky. It’s true; we do not see starlight in the malls. We do not feel the effects of interstellar wind in the afternoon stillness of our offices. But we have discovered something. We have discovered forgiveness, simplicity of life, contentment, and telling the truth. These are our little achievements on this modest world on the outer rim of the Milky Way. We are not alive amid terrestrial forests and galactic super clusters to please some corporation or bank or military official. We are alive with the giant redwoods, the bald eagle, the cougar, with all the animals and plants, during a few orbits of our planet around its star, to wonder, to embrace it all with compassion, and to be happy. (From: On A Planet Sailing West)

My purpose in creating RAVINGS, a newsletter I sent out monthly from September, 1999 to December, 2004, was to encourage a tenderness and appreciation for our universe and for the animals and plants who share this world with us. I wanted to offer more discerning and profound ways to perceive our planet, ourselves and the creatures than the scornful assumptions to which our culture usually exposes us. The newsletter’s success was immediate and enthusiastic—and it eventually reached far more than the original audience, thanks to those people who passed it on to friends and to libraries. Local and then widespread interest and support from professors, teenagers, school teachers, activists, feminists, hunters, grandparents, and radicals (even radical grandparents), as well as workers and professionals of every age and stripe, inspired us to publish several books of RAVINGS to reach an even wider audience. On a Planet Sailing West is the first such book. A second volume, Under the Same Stars, will appear in a few months. We are publishing the books through our own JL Blue Candle Adventures in an attempt to make sure they are marketed with the enthusiasm and integrity that the characters in our first volume—the grizzlies and salamanders and trees and lions and tigers and mourning doves—for example, deserve.

The name JL Blue Candle Adventures was inspired by the blue candle that was a gift from one of my special education students. The little boy was in my class for three years and the year he was to graduate from 5th grade was also to be the year I would retire. Starting in September the little boy had told me, “This year I’m going to buy you a present,” and no matter how many times I told him that I preferred handmade gifts or extra help at school, he repeated it like a mantra. I had watched his family struggle to obtain basic necessities over the years, met with his mom who walked to every meeting regardless of the weather. I’d seen the dad working around the motel where they lived and I had tremendous respect for all of them. Please, no presents. But on graduation day, one of my last in the classroom, with gleeful eyes the boy presented me with the lovely heart shaped blue candle. Such generosity of spirit, such confidence, such a moment of joy, it provided a perfect inspiration for this new phase of my life and a wonderful symbol for our new business. I know if ever I start to worry about financial matters or feel fear about the future, I need only light the blue candle and remember what prosperity and happiness and abundance looked like in that little boy’s eyes.

Linda Clarke, a professor of philosophy and education, earned her doctorate from Columbia University. She is an environmentalist, yogi, feminist, champion of all creatures, and co-founder of Millett Farm, a writers and artists colony for women. For more information, please visit the website: www.jlblue.com or call 845-255-0008.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the martyrdom of the four church women—Maura Clarke, MM, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, MM, and Dorothy Kazel, OSU—who were murdered in El Salvador on December 2, 1980. The following is a poem written by Sister Carla Piette, who served with them and who was killed in a vehicular accident shortly before their deaths. It was read as part of the service recently held at Maryknoll in New York commemorating their deaths.