Family Matters

My family, which includes my two living parents (still happily married), nine children, seven spouses, 22 nieces and nephews and some grand-nieces/nephews, has a Yahoo group listserv that I set up several years back, and over the past year it has become quite a forum for political and religious debate.


As the family is loosely based in Southern California, the debate is revolving around Proposition 8, which I don't know the details of, but seems to be put forth by opponents of same-sex marriage. Within my family, the religious bloc (Roman Catholic and Evangelical) has a solid majority and has been weighing in solidly in favor of Prop 8. Apparently, zealots who are not in favor of Prop. 8 have been doing inappropriate things like ripping the Yes on 8 bumper sticker off my nephew Sam's car and stealing yard signs from other family members. This the family Prop 8 supporters use as evidence that homosexuals are an angry lot who are asking for more than they deserve. Um, good going, anti-Prop 8 zealots... NOT!

Anyway, I have been mostly responsible within my own family for waving the liberal flag while also pointing out the consistencies of progressive views with the Christian gospel. It hasn't been an easy task. No matter what I say, none of the family religious conservatives seem to concede any points to me. What? Did I think I could change their minds?

I ask questions, the most compelling ones of which are mostly answered with silence. If abortion is made illegal and women who break that law are charged as murderers, do we try them for infanticide? What is the appropriate punishment? (Hello? Anyone here? Echo echo echo echo...) What is sacred about your marriage? So far, mostly silence, except from one sister and her husband who are heavily involved in the Marriage Encounter movement.

My essays are well-crafted and I use all my writer's faculties of eloquence, using apples-to-apples comparisons, and employing compelling images. If I'm not going through all this trouble to change them, then why am I doing it? After all, the more truthfully I write, the more I "out" myself as a freethinker, a free-doer, and a free-lover. I surely risk their affinity if not their respect.

I do hope that I prick at their conscience as reality pricked at mine, eventually eroding my orthodoxy. But there's another reason.

Remember that huge family of mine? Take 22 kids, and there's going to be a homosexual or two, probably an abortion in there somewhere, some drug use, perhaps some other things that may one day lead to alienation. I hope to be, and it would be my privilege as well to be, that family member they can come to for support. Maybe I can even be a support for the one caught in hatred or discomfort who wants to get past it. I hope to be a vessel, a container, for that trust and love. Perhaps it will never come to pass within my own blood family, but I am blessed to be that container for my "larger" human family.

In her missive about gay marriage, one of my sisters, the one who is involved in Marriage Encounter, went down the line of all my married brothers and sisters, praising them for what they and their marriage bring to the world. When she got to me, the last of the nine, and the only one who has never been married, she said, "sorry we are not too close ... and so I can't comment on how you are life-giving to others in your daily life."

So I invited my sister to call me and find out. And after I wrote that response, I was suddenly confronted with how it would be difficult to communicate that to her. I think she could get her brain around the spiritual direction work I do -- after all, that comes from the Catholic tradition although it has been adopted by most major spiritual movements today. That I helped establish a fish farm in the Peruvian Shipibo hamlet of San Francisco Yarinacocha should provide some information. But what about the work that I do in sacred sexuality, endeavoring to make it safer for people, many of whom like myself are single and sexually active, to become more alive, more pure energetically, more satisfied, and more loving of themselves and others? Could she get this when she believes that sex outside of marriage is a sin by its very nature? Do I go all the way, and share that last component with her?

It is not easy to be an outsider, the mysterious and feared "Other" who lives outside the city walls, to be the one who on one hand feeds the larger culture's imagination and yet is reviled and suspected on the other hand. It's a tough, sacred mission. It is big fun, big trouble, and rarely is it ever popular with one's own family of origin.

It's Nature's Way...

(AP Photo credit)

My good friend Bill called me this morning to shoot the breeze while we were both on our way to work. I was nearly to Salem, and would be in the parking garage in a couple of minutes, and he was stranded in the midst of a Sigalert traffic jam on the 118 Freeway in LA, with the traffic halted because of a severe fire.

As I spoke with him, and later as I logged onto the news and saw reports of the sundry fires hitting Southern California, I had a sense of relief, the kind of relief one might have after dodging a bullet. I remembered a time after I had sold my home in LA and I was driving north -- perhaps it was May 2006 and I was headed up to explore the Pacific Northwest. Whenever it was, there was a big headline-grabbing fire and I remember driving up I-5 toward the Bay Area, and seeing the inferno engulfing the hills along the north rim of the LA Basin. As I was driving north, I had the sense that at the very least, I wasn't supposed to live there anymore, and that, on a deeper level, neither is anyone else.

Don't get me wrong: I love Los Angeles and relish my memories of life there. But there's a place where my body intersects with my understanding of ecosystems, and my intuition about Pacha Mama to say that We Are Not Welcome there anymore. The hills are burning, we are being smoked out of our suburbs, and we can't afford the water it takes to keep putting out these fires. With each fire, comes subsequent mudslides that in turn, wreck our houses and our roads.

Now, in my condo in Van Nuys we only had to deal with the smoke, as the Valley floor was set safely back from the chapparal and the lawns and trees were moist with Colorado River irrigation. But to think that the water that was nurturing us came from miles away, and at the grave expense of other natural communities, gnawed at me. To hear about a new fire and wonder if my friends in the hills would be threatened by it, gnawed at me. Another fire, after another fire, after another fire, after another fire... Humans are supposed to have rainy seasons (the Southwest has ceased to have those anymore), sunny seasons, fall seasons, spring seasons ... but ... fire seasons?

It takes an immense effort of artificial infrastructure to make Southern California a habitable environment for mass quantities of humans, at great expense to all aspects of the environment. If I had to move back, you would probably see me making some kind of appeasement offerings to Pacha Mama on a regular basis to remind her that I know she doesn't prefer me here!

Here in the Northwest, our water is local and pure. Our lawns grow green in the winter and brown in the summer, but there's always an emeraldness to this place. We live in the midst of a fertile, green valley flanked by a giant River That Runs Through It. It's never brittle-hot in the Willamette Valley. We have spruce, firs, maples, moss, and ferns. The latter two grow wild in our lawns!

I remember a TV commercial from my youth, for a hand lotion where they took a dried-up sycamore leaf, and rubbed it with lotion to moisten and restore it. Living here, I truly feel like that dried up leaf turning green again. When it doesn't rain for a few days, I miss it and look forward to more rain. It keeps us alive, moist, softened.

I am grateful for my myriad LA friends and look forward to visiting all of you when I make it down there ... And I hope there are no fires going on when I do! And I would love for any of you to come visit here, try living here... in the end, it's MUCH more sustainable. I'm just sayin'...

It's tough these days for a Goddess

(photo credit: Associated Press)
It's very interesting how in pagan and tantric circles we speak of "Goddess worship." For the uninitiated, "Goddess worship" here in the West has meant anything from letting the woman have her way to paying a woman to pleasure her as she pleases.

But in Nepal, a young child is selected by a panel of duly qualified judges, subjected to some interesting tests, and then worshiped as the deity Taleju by Hindus and some Buddhists while isolated in a palace until puberty, when she is divested of her divine status and attempts the difficult transition to "normal" life. (See article below.) So in Nepal, clearly another paradigm is at play.

Or is it?

When the biblical prophets spoke out against idolatry, they were making an important point that is often lost by Christians (and others) today: that there is only one God, and that everything else is a manifestation of God, so worship God and not the manifestation. Even the Hindus, with their colorful pantheon, believe that all these gods are manifestations of God.

As a brief note on this particular blogger, I believe there is one God, whom at times I worship as Goddess, or as Jesus, or as Spirit. I even use statues and iconography to focus my worship -- a practice I jokingly call "idolatry for fun and profit."

A priest and theologian I knew in my college days had a compelling definition of idolatry. Fr. Jim Nisbet used to say that idolatry is taking anything, even God, so seriously that you can't laugh at it.

Which brings me to my point: Nepalese kumari worship and western "Goddess worship" aren't that far apart.

I'll be bold here: Women are no more or no less "Goddess" than I am. And no, I'm not letting you in on my secret choice of underwear or anything else related to my exterior form.

What I'm talking about is this: The Goddess, the Divine Feminine, is a force that abides in every human being, not to mention everywhere you find beauty and love. Sometimes she even resides in dark, messy, destructive places. But she is a spiritual force that neither woman nor man can claim for her or himself.

I love being "worshiped" just as much as the next guy. Seriously. Rub my feet, feed me gnocchi and tollhouse cookies. Have beautiful naked women feed me cherries and tell me how awesome I am. I will gladly accept your worship, whether you call me God or Goddess. But allow me to chuckle, secure in knowing that God is being worshiped in both the giver and receiver. If I take your worship personally, please print this blog out and wave it my face.

Be careful when you call yourself or your friend a Goddess. The murkiness that you're entering is that every human being partakes in the divine equally. We are, all of us, gods and idiots. We are saints and criminals. Can you own that you are a luminous child of God, and at the same time, not take yourself personally? Can you behold a perfectly "average" woman, or a three-year-old "perfect" Nepali girl, and your own reflection in the mirror, and realize that there is no difference in the measure of divine substance, the Goddess herself, in each one?

If you can, then let's get down to some serious Goddess worship.

Nepal appoints 3-year-old as new living goddess

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal on Tuesday.

Wrapped in red silk and adorned with red flowers in her hair, Matani Shakya received approval from the priests and President Ram Baran Yadav in a centuries-old tradition with deep ties to Nepal's monarchy, which was abolished in May.

The new "kumari" or living goddess, was carried from her parents' home to an ancient palatial temple in the heart of the Nepali capital, Katmandu, where she will live until she reaches puberty and loses her divine status.

She will be worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists as an incarnation of the powerful Hindu deity Taleju.

A panel of judges conducted a series of ancient ceremonies to select the goddess from several 2- to 4-year-old girls who are all members of the impoverished Shakya goldsmith caste.

The judges read the candidates' horoscopes and check each one for physical imperfections. The living goddess must have perfect hair, eyes, teeth and skin with no scars, and should not be afraid of the dark.

As a final test, the living goddess must spend a night alone in a room among the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes without showing fear.

Having passed all the tests, the child will stay in almost complete isolation at the temple, and will be allowed to return to her family only at the onset of menstruation when a new goddess will be named to replace her.

"I feel a bit sad, but since my child has become a living goddess I feel proud," said her father Pratap Man Shakya.

During her time as a goddess, she will always wear red, pin up her hair in topknots, and have a "third eye" painted on her forehead.

Devotees touch the girls' feet with their foreheads, the highest sign of respect among Hindus in Nepal. During religious festivals the goddesses are wheeled around on a chariot pulled by devotees.

Critics say the tradition violates both international and Nepalese laws on child rights. The girls often struggle to readjust to normal lives after they return home.

Nepalese folklore holds that men who marry a former kumari will die young, and so many girls remain unmarried and face a life of hardship.