Posts Tagged With: community

An Offering from the Heart

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Carla Woody

A  couple of months ago, the newly established Museum of Beadwork in Portland, Maine sent a call out for bead artists to participate in a very special project, which would become part of their permanent collection.  It was an invitation to a community undertaking. Artists would create a design of their choice on a six-inch square hard surface. All the squares would be put together in such a way to form a visual quilt.

The potential of such a project caught my attention. Decades ago in a college art class, the instructor assigned students to shoot black and white photos of the urban industrial landscape that were later cut up, pieced together and mounted on a large collective board. It produced an interesting piece of art. I’m quite sure the outcome was intended to probe the depths of a philosophy—because that’s who the instructor was—and open our sensibilities. I wish I remembered what we unearthed, quite unknown to us at the start. At any rate, the memory of that assignment, the process and result, stayed with me all these years and came to mind again after I received the call for bead artists.

I sat with it. I considered participating but nothing as far as design came to me. And frankly, I  work much larger than the criteria allowed, and it felt restricting. But then I thought about haiku and the six-word story. In their brevity, just the framework, much is left open to the reader’s interpretation.  And isn’t that what art is at its best anyway? Something evocative that touches you? Through which you can have an experience?

That still didn’t produce a design of any juice for me. Finally, something did. I focus my writing there frequently, and especially now.

 

…liminal space, the territory that holds the material and imaginal realms equally…until they come together as one.

—Excerpted from Liminal

 

In the last month I’ve written of immediacy and the process we’ve collectively undertaken one way or another produced by the pandemic: This Pilgrimage We’re On and Move Slowly Back Into the World.

Of course, I’d also want to commemorate my own process in a piece of artwork! But it’s even more than that. Within a rite of passage, it would become a sacrament. An invocation, an intent to release into the world held lightly by community. It takes on power. With shape, color and symbols, as the piece may speak for me, others may find their own meaning through what is left unexplained. The fashioning of form, the placement of each bead is no less a prayer, the embodiment of spiritual practice set into it, ultimately to be released to those who may feel and see, those who open their sensibilities to be touched in that way.

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Offering from the Heart. Bas relief mixed media, 6″x6.” ©2020 Carla Woody.

I finished my Offering from the Heart. Now it’s getting ready to travel across the country to finally find its placement in the community project.

An idea occurred to me after my own piece was completed. This really is a momentous time to make visible what comes from the core. While I usually don’t accept art commissions, I would be glad to do so for anyone wanting to mark their own rite of passage in this way. An intent to move into form, remembrance of a loved one, a blessing to release whatever it is whose time is past. The expression would be yours to formulate and provide me as the well from which to draw. The heart—being the carrier of love and resonance—and the square—as consciousness, Mother Earth, foundation—would remain the common elements. A piece to take its place on your altar, hang on the wall, or include in ceremony. I’d welcome any sacred items, symbols or anything else that would further personalize and would be possible to include within a 6”x6” or 8”x8” format.

See my artist website for detailed images, options and pricing.

Categories: Contemplative Life, Global Consciousness, Healing, Spiritual Evolution, Visual Arts | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

This Pilgrimage We’re On

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Carla Woody

I’ve now been in stay-at-home mode for 60 days. That’s 2 weeks before it became an order here in Arizona. Suddenly, I had all this open space stretching out in front of me. Like everyone else, commitments—work  and otherwise—were cancelled at least for a few months. Part of me was relieved. I haven’t had this much open space in…well…I couldn’t remember when.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The only other times I could come up with, other than a few weeks here and there for personal travel, was when I’d undertaken the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.  But now I’m well beyond that in time by 23 days with uncertainty when I’ll emerge.

On May 10, 2015, I donned my pilgrim suit and officially began walking the Camino Francés, which starts on the French side of the Pyrénées in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Now, it’s a complete synchronicity that I decided to sit down and begin this writing on the same date five years later. I didn’t plan it. Nor did I remember the date I began my walk. I discovered this fact when I just pulled up my blog from that time, The Essential Way, looking to reference something.

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But these are strange times, and the synchronicities have occurred with regularity for me in the last several weeks. Maybe I’m more sensitive  to the vibrations around all of us carrying information, or more able to note things clearly visible beneath the surface, since I’ve been wrapped in silence most of the time.

I remember having a sense that something big was coming for some time, and when it finally dropped, I did elect to go into retreat here at home, formally setting aside 10 days of this sojourn framed by long meditations each day, being in silence, ruminating on what came through, writing and artwork. In some ways, I feel it frivolous to even share these things—when others are undergoing great suffering. Not just minor inconveniences. But the fact is my more introverted nature thrives on such opportunities of emptiness.

What is so different between my 2015 pilgrimage and what we’re undergoing now in 2020? Choice. Even though I’ve never been able to articulate it in words, I was called to the Camino. It was my clear choice, and the same for most who have walked it since Medieval times. That’s unless, as happened back then, some who found themselves forced to do so as  penance for some crime. On the other hand, this pandemic came out of nowhere, imposed itself upon most inhabitants of the planet. For crimes? Maybe. It’s stopped us all short and threw the human world into global chaos, while nature continues to do what nature does.

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The Camino path is well  marked. If you’re a pilgrim in that setting, you know where you’re going at all times. There’s even a recognizable symbol: the scallop shell. Pilgrims are identified by the shell hanging off their clothes or knapsack, and the directional signs, even in the middle of nowhere, are marked with it.

There’s no clear cut path for us now. It’s empty, hazy at best. We don’t have any measures of distance or time. Many of the foundations we thought we had…have crumbled. Illusions. We’ve been shown the dark underbelly and the essence of light.

If those are differences between a well-marked trail and the pandemic, what are the similarities?

In the Chiapas highlands of Mexico, the Maya petition the owner of the land—the Earth Lord—for protection or other things they want. But the Earth Lord also demands payment, a sacrifice. Consequently, the Maya alternately revere and fear this Underworld being. But if you think about it, isn’t this a Universal truth? Sacred reciprocity. The Indigenous people of Peru call it ayni and live by it. Something transformational always involves releasing, letting go, in order to receive something more. It’s just the ego self that balks.

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Prior to embarking on my Camino, I told friends I felt as though I would be placing my feet into the very footfalls of all who had walked there before…all the way back to the Middle Ages.  Be careful what you project especially if, in a sense, it’s true. The 4th day out I sustained what is still a mystery injury that resulted in not being able to put any weight on my right foot without excruciating pain. That’s a story. The pain barely dissipated but I chose to continue on. Now I would say I was making payment. What did it do for me? It forced me to slow down, way down. I shuffled s-l-o-w-l-y along the Camino leaning on a walking stick, and what beauty I noticed that I would otherwise likely have missed. What insights I had. No matter I had to undergo physical therapy upon return home.

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It’s usual for pilgrims to leave notes or prayers at shrines beside the trails. I distinctly remember doing so at a particular shrine. But I have no memory at all what that piece of  paper said. I have no need. I left that part of myself there.

Most pilgrims never forget their Camino. To a one there was suffering of some sort. It’s arduous. And we’re different once its end has come.

Won’t this also be true of the pilgrimage called the pandemic? How we undertake this walk? The sacrifices? The suffering? We’re being called upon to be our Best Self ever. Some are wholeheartedly answering this call while others go in a different direction.

Here’s a truth: The follow-on to chaos—if we’re wise—is a sorting process that can lead to a more identified, aligned existence. If mindful, the Collective We can identify the world we want to live in and lay out, to degrees, how it unfolds. That’s an intent. We have choice within a framework: how to make the most of the time given.

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On the Camino, there’s companionship with complete strangers. Some of those turned into lifetime friendships. We helped each other. We’re compassionate. We recognized there’s no difference between ourselves and others. We’re the same. We’re all in it together. Don’t we have a multitude of examples such as this now, during the pandemic, from around the world?

On the Camino, we underwent a metamorphosis. We were different than when we started. I’m willing to bet that, whenever we come out the other side of this pandemic, we’ll also find this to be the case.

During the Camino…

Somewhere along the way, once I got the rhythm down pat, I began to note somewhat tongue-in-cheek differences between daily life on the Camino and home. But the more I listed the more I realized it’s an intimate glimpse of common pilgrim experiences you normally wouldn’t be aware of unless you’d undertaken the journey. I also began to have insights, reminders and resolutions related to some of them…

After I got home, I documented all of those I wrote down while walking. On that blog post, I called the first section I’ll Know I’m Home When… Here are some from that list.

… I’m no longer looking for markers every few minutes to tell me where to go, except perhaps subliminally.

… I’ll no longer hear the well wishes Buen Camino spoken to me by nearly every pilgrim and so many locals, or say it myself, as we pass each other.

… I’ll have more than one change of clothing.

… I’ll have more choices to wear on my feet than hiking shoes or flip flops

… I’ll know on a consistent basis where I’ll lay my head each night.

 … If I’m sleeping in a roomful of people, I’ll know them all ahead and never in numbers between 12-100 in one room.

I called the second section My Take-Aways.

It’s important to be alert to the lay of the land to avoid becoming lost or overlooking tell-tale signals that things are off track or hidden. I resolve to sharpen my peripheral and x-ray vision.

Flexibility is a virtue. It’s also important to set your limits and abide by them. I resolve to identify with even more depth and breadth what is true for me.

A simple life in the best sense is a pure one, devoid of clutter in the mind or unnecessary material goods, anything that weighs down the spirit. I resolve to up-level my sorting and pitching process.

There are more that I’d written. All still true for me now. But this one particularly caught my attention as I read through the post.

I undertook this journey through willing choice. If you look at the list, you may notice there are aspects that are similar to those whose lives often aren’t through choice but circumstance. In a certain way, I had a light taste of what it’s like to be homeless, to experience restriction. The more days I walked the more this awareness settled on me. It increased my compassion toward anyone who finds themselves in such a place and has difficulty finding a way through. There’s always a way across a threshold. It also deepened the great gratitude I hold for having the life I do, and the capability of coming up with strategies to navigate the tricky times.

I’m going to start my list for the pandemic, what I’ve noticed and how I want to be on the other side. Some of these will be the same. Some will be new in the sense of further revealed.

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On my 2015 pilgrimage, when the going got physically rough for me, I invoked a Sufi wazifa.* On the in-breath I would chant Ya Fattah. On the out-breath, I would repeat Ya Fattah. Over and over and over. That beautiful name got me up mountains and down the other side when I sincerely wondered if I would make it.

Here’s holding these pandemic times are embedded in our Collective Consciousness in a good way and direct tomorrow. There’s a choice in every moment.

Ya Fattah! Ya Fattah! O, Opener of the way!

May all beings be happy. May all beings be well.

***

*The Sufi wazifas are the 99 Beautiful Names of God that, when chanted, seeks to call upon the person any sacred attribute that is named.

 

 

Categories: Contemplative Life, COVID-19, Spiritual Travel | Tags: , , , , , | 5 Comments

Music Review – On the Wings of a Butterfly

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Carla Woody

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Kathy Marshall has released her third CD in just the time we so need her thoughtful, heartfelt lyrics. On the Wings of a Butterfly took five years to come into being. Worth waiting for, her words and music are reflected against the backdrop of a world that has gone off the rails. Kathy poignantly acknowledges her own challenges in these times, but gently pulls us back toward realignment. And she reminds us…together we matter in building a world that embraces love. We gather strength for this journey. That is the effect this new album has on me.

Some works of art unconsciously, naturally create themselves as a whole within the artist first. Then emerge in purity and perfection to touch others in such a way that we—the listener—become the one singing the song, having the experience.

From It Takes Love: Carry me across the water…Fly me through the air…it takes love to flow that way…Help me light the fire…Walk with me on the earth…

From Help Us Now: We were meant for these times…We were born to be here…The world is changing and fighting for her life…Today I said a prayer…That Love and Light is there…Shining brightly like the midday sun…

All lyrics and music written by Kathy Marshall. CD available to purchase or download via her website and CD Baby where you may also listen to individual songs.

For my review on Kathy Marshall’s second CD, Standing on Sacred Ground, go here.

Categories: Global Consciousness, Healing, Honoring the Earth, Music Review, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

To Be Human

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Carla Woody

There are two questions Krista Tippett of On Being consistently asks people she interviews. She starts out with what was your religious upbringing? The answer to that may or may not be relevant in the present, although the effect lingers in some way—great or small. Somewhere along the way she does the deep dive with what does it mean to be human? Even though people are usually expecting this question, given Krista’s long history of asking it, there’s a pause…because the answer is defining. There are two additional questions that aren’t usually spoken but are inferred: How do we want to live? Who will we be to each other? From these, the beliefs, interests and actions of the individual naturally unfold to state who they are in the world. It has to do with Identity. It’s important.

I’m not religious but do identify as spiritual. My beliefs are firmly grounded in human potential, the humanitarian and respect for the planet. With that, the questions mentioned previously—setting aside the one on religion—are engrained within my consciousness. Sometimes I think it would be easier if they weren’t, if I could turn my back. But I can’t, even as exhausting as it’s become in the last few years. The questions are swirling around all of us, coming from every direction, calling continually for us to define Who We Are.

Aside from the many environmental issues, immigration is at the forefront for me, having written of it before in regard to Francisco Cantú’s book The Line Becomes a River. I hold great respect for the many who are acting with decency, some with great sacrifice, to do what they can, seeing those in need as people—not chips in a political game.

In October, the Prescott United Methodist Church and others in the local interfaith community, League of Women Voters, Prescott Indivisible and Prescott Peacebuilders sponsored an immigration panel. I went because I really wanted to know how the question was being answered locally. Representation on the panel was wide-ranging, covering a lot of ground. Of the invitations extended, we learned that only the Prescott Police Department declined to send a representative as panel member.

These are the key points offered from those on the panel.

Saul Fein is a Holocaust survivor. Born in Romania, he emigrated to Argentina in early WWII, finally coming to the US to become a citizen after the mandatory five-year wait period. He made these important statements.

Emigration spells persecution. People don’t leave their homes unless they’re threatened significantly.

A member of the local immigrant community, who had come from Mexico 25 years ago, spoke of life as an immigrant seeking citizenship in the US. The tears she could not hold back, her shaking body, communicated more than words ever could.

Dan Streeter, Superintendent of the Humboldt Unified School District, the largest in Yavapai County, cited the 14th Amendment, Civil Rights, Family Rights and Privacy Acts related to protection, and that schools are prohibited from denying students access based on immigration status. He was reassuring in that he said, This is not a political issue for schools. This is a child issue for schools. That was a relief, but then he also stated concerns about children coming to school hungry, or not at all, as families avoid available assistance out of fear—a valid one [my comment].

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Photo credit: Doug Iverson.

Laura Rambikur is an adjunct professor at Boston University’s School of Theology teaching graduate level courses on immigration and theology. She also works as a clinical therapist, serving survivors of torture, for the International Rescue Committee in Phoenix. She spoke of history and what makes it important today.

Family separation links all the way back to the transatlantic slave trade. What we’re experiencing today is baked into how this country really came to be. Immigration in this country is always been linked along racial lines, as well as economic empowerment for very specific groups of people in positions of power.

 We can’t begin to have a conversation on immigration until we recognize the history we participate in. The theological concept of Manifest Destiny is taught in our schools: the right to take advantage of, to conquer and to expand.

 This led westward expansion and cultural development specifically in the Southwest. This is important when thinking of boundaries and borders, especially when considering tribal communities that have been here more than 3000 years. Until the 1930s, tribal membership numbers were kept in the Arizona Game and Wildlife [designation]. Until 1970s, Native Americans had to pass a literacy test to have the right to vote. Immigration has always been about who is counted and who is not, always along racial lines.

 Today politicians use theology [quoting scripture out of context] in a very public way that affirms children being ripped from the arms of their parents.

 How do we participate in these policies whether we are aware of them or not?

Ella Rawls, daughter of an immigrant, is an immigration attorney working with low income immigrants in southern Arizona. Ella went through the types of visas and application process. For some, it may take 12 years.

Now in San Diego and El Paso, when they present at the border, they are no longer allowed into the US. They get a court date and are forced to go back to Mexico to wait. Courts are secretive and do not allow legal observers to view what’s going on. The level of success is very low unless they have access to immigration lawyers, who are often hard to reach and, if not working for a nonprofit, very expensive.

Sue Lefebvre is the author of No More Deaths and representative of the humanitarian organization by the same name based in southern Arizona. Their mission is: to end death and suffering in the Mexico–US borderlands through civil initiative: people of conscience working openly and in community to uphold fundamental human rights. More information on their website. They have especially been in the news over the last few years for search and rescue efforts in the desert, and providing aid by leaving water, food and blankets on migrant trails. Volunteers have been arrested while carrying out their duties according to their charter. Dr. Scott Warren was put on trial in federal court for harboring undocumented migrants, a felony, which ended in a hung jury. Some of the charges were dropped. But, as I’m writing this, he has entered retrial in Tucson and faces 10 years in prison if convicted. You can follow a daily log of the trial here.

Sue spoke about the impact on those living along the border, and hardships and deaths of migrants.

In 1994 NAFTA between the US, Canada and Mexico came into being and destroyed the cotton market in Mexico. Farmers began to move north. In addition, in 1994, they tightened measures at border entry. Many more began attempting to cross through the desert. Before 1994, there were a few deaths in the desert. In 2000 there were 1,600,000 arrests and 260 people died in the Arizona desert [and it’s kept climbing].

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Photo credit: No More Deaths.

Elea Ziegelbaum is a graduate of Prescott College and community organizer from northern Arizona who has focused on migrant and climate justice since high school. She spent several months on a research project collecting data on immigration enforcement in Yavapai County. In her talk she especially focused on the 287(g) program, an agreement between ICE and the Yavapai Sheriff Department. Few in the audience knew what she was talking about.

That’s because it’s secretive. It authorizes local law enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement, the highest level of collaboration possible, with ICE.

This is a completely voluntary agreement.

The main emphasis is to elevate detentions and deportations in members of the immigrant and undocumented community in any given area by creating a tight web that increases people’s chances of being arrested and deported.

Yavapai County has had the 287(g) agreement since 2008. The impact is hard to determine because the records are kept under wraps. They are not open to sharing arrest and deportation data. So, this is a conservative number. Since 2008, 1812 arrests can be confirmed.  Again, a conservative number. Considering how small our communities are, even this is a sizeable impact that has torn families apart.

 Diane Iverson, children’s book author and illustrator, opened the panel with a prayer she’d written. By the time she’d said the last words, tears were slipping down my cheeks…because, as a collective, we’ve fallen so short of the ideals she mentioned, and so many have closed their hearts.

Prayer for the Immigrant

 Oh God, whose name is love, we have a statue on our shore. She lifts her flame heavenward in a way that makes us proud to be American. Please make us worthy of her lofty ideals. Give us hearts willing to share the blessings of this country.

 Welcome into your peace the father and his child, face down on the river’s edge, who longed for the life we sometimes take for granted. Give us the will to free the little ones from their cages and into the arms of their loved ones.

 Be present with all those who work to create and enforce laws, that our nation may be both just and compassionate. Open our hearts that we may remember our own immigration story. For we were strangers in the land of Egypt, and yet here we are, in the comfort and safety of this room and this country by your abundant grace. Amen.

So, we are left with the questions mentioned in the beginning whose answers provide a platform to live by…

What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? Who will we be to each other?

Categories: Compassionate Action, Global Consciousness, Indigenous Rights | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Insidious Expectation of Privilege: Taking Things for Granted

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Carla Woody

By chance, I flew out just hours ahead of the predicted snow, hoping to meet better weather in Ohio where I was visiting my folks for a week. I live in a rural, wilderness-like setting on a hill abutting state trust land below, and love it there. Just yesterday morning a bobcat sat on my deck giving herself a bath then wandered on her way. Such things are a blessing to me. Nature—miles of it—is right outside my door. The fact that I must drive unmaintained dirt roads to my place, and absence of services like mail delivery and trash pick-up, have been of little consequence to me. I figure these factors will keep most people from inhabiting this area, and I can maintain my solitude. My neighbor Barry, who lives about a mile away, would stop in to feed my cat while I was gone. He was dependable and I wasn’t worried. That was Monday.

By Wednesday, there were news updates that a colossal snowstorm was imminent back in northern Arizona. I texted Barry and asked him to leave a full bowl of dry food that day for my cat in case he couldn’t make it over the next day. Over the ensuing days, he sent texts with updates as to the situation at home. We had a few feet of snow with drifts up to a foot higher and periodic white-outs. He couldn’t locate my driveway due to the depth of snow and was trekking in from the old ranch road that ran through the state trust land. I later learned that for a day or two the road from his place was also unpassable and—bless his heart—he slogged through snow up to his knees to feed my ungrateful cat who never shows her face to him.

Now, if you live in places like Wisconsin, New York or Canada, this is probably nothing. But we don’t get this kind of weather here and aren’t prepared for it. I didn’t even own a snow shovel. Normally, if there is snowfall at my home, it melts in a couple of hours and the sun is out again. Not so this time. Then came the text from Barry that I had no water. Now I was worried.

Nothing changed over the days until I headed home except Barry said he’d made a trail from his repeated footsteps up the hill so I’d be able to walk in more easily, about a quarter mile. Again, that doesn’t sound like much, and minus the snow wouldn’t have exhausted me ferrying necessities up the slippery slope from where I’d had to leave my vehicle.

The storm was moving eastward across the US. Again luckily, I got out of Ohio early morning before high winds hit but was rerouted because of the storm elsewhere. Before I ventured homeward in the car the next morning, I remembered to buy gallons of drinking water.  Over the next several days, I learned just how much snow it took to make a minimal amount of melted water for domestic use and how much of my time had to be devoted to basic living needs. At least I still had heat. I still could not drive my 4WD vehicle up my driveway.

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Q’eros. Photo: Santos Machacca.

In the midst of scooping snow into containers, I began to think of my Q’ero friends living in their high-altitude villages in the Peruvian Andes in stone huts with dirt floors. No electricity or running water and minimal heat. What was a temporary, minor inconvenience for me is a way of life for them, a hard one.

Just a few days prior to my trip to Ohio, I received a message from Santos Machacca, my Q’ero friend and liaison for the work I do there. He was up in the village of Ccochamocco and told me of the cold torrential rains they were having. At 14,500’ altitude the nights get quite cold even in their springtime. Santos said a lot of baby alpaca were dying. This news reinforced to me the importance of our project providing shelters for alpaca and sheep, not something the norm for them. The Q’ero people are subsistence farmers living on inhospitable land and climate. Loss of any livestock threatens their wellbeing and traditions.

 

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Newborn lambs. Photo: Gi Thomas.

Just as my snow days were starting to draw to an end, I heard from Gi Thomas, one of the board members for Kenosis Spirit Keepers. They were being hit with the monster snowstorm moving across the country. Gi and her partner Katrina Marshall live on a farm in Oregon and had newborn lambs. She wrote, “I’m working hard at just keeping the sheep warm, fed, snow shoveled, water tubs full, etc. All this snow reminds me of what Q’eros must be like during those big snow storms of late. Helps me keep things in perspective.”

 

 

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Katrina Marshall in Oregon. Photo: Gi Thomas.

But lack of snow can bring about hardship, too. I’ve just returned from my program on Hopi. This year they’ve had the same plentiful moisture we have so far. It wasn’t so last winter.  We’d received almost no snowfall and very light monsoon in 2017. I saw the effect because the free-range cattle that sometimes come around my place had eaten a four-foot spread of prickly pear cactus down to nothing. They must have insides of iron. Prickly pear have long, menacing thorns.

During the several days we were on Hopi, comments came from different directions lamenting the drought conditions of the previous year. Traditional Hopis use dry farming, depending on moisture from the sky—not irrigation—to grow their corn, beans, melon and squash. Last year they were not able to produce the needed corn for their ceremonies, or food from their fields.

These days they have access to grocery stores, so are not solely dependent on what they can grow. But it caused me to ask the question, “What did your ancestors do?” The answer came, “They stored food from year to year.” But what if there are years of drought?

The snow finally cleared to the point a plumber could make it up my driveway a week after I returned home. He checked the usual (scary, expensive) suspects causing lack of water, and they didn’t apply. Thankfully. He finally tracked down the issue, an outside electrical outlet that needed to be reset—strangely connected to my well. A push of the button and water began to flow again. He was there about fifteen minutes minus the friendly conversation. I was glad to pay the rather large bill for my needs to be taken care of so easily.

I’m a privileged Westerner living in the area I do by choice, in a home built to my specifications with modern conveniences. Any inconveniences are ones I choose or merely temporary. Most of us—those likely reading this article—are given to taking precious things for granted. Running water, electricity, access to food, readily available transportation, wellbeing. Freedom to live where we choose. These are some of the insidious underpinnings of privilege. There are plenty more. We expect to have them even as others do not. By an accident of birth, we are not where they are.

I cannot brush that recognition away. I cannot turn a blind eye. I cannot do nothing. I bless that storm for reminding me.

Categories: Global Consciousness, Gratitude, Spiritual Evolution | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Borderlands

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Carla Woody

I’m sitting here waiting for the words to come. Sometimes writing is like that. Not because there’s writer’s block but because it takes a while – sometimes a long while – for the feelings to swim up…and form thought…then phrases…then sentences. At least enough to make a cohesive statement.

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Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Carla Woody

I’m not sure I’m there yet. I knew it five days ago when, during the final circle of this year’s spiritual travel journey in Maya Lands, I attempted to express myself. By then we’d been in the rainforest for five days. Its soft humidity – really, something about the inherent energy ⎻ tends to open other dimensions for me, even as it retains the Great Mystery. Perhaps it has something to do with the insistent, primal calling of the howler monkeys.

Having heard theirs, I’d offered some last reflections to the group on our experiences then paused. I realized I’d left out a piece I was struggling with emotionally, something well beyond my control. What I was able to say in that moment felt totally inadequate in relation to what I wanted to say. I imagine it came out somewhat flat, even though I could feel the tears in my throat.

linebecomesariverI’d avoided reading The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú for several months. I knew the subject matter would be hard for me to ingest. My feelings about what’s been happening at the US-Mexico border run deep. It rips my heart out. I personally know Rita Cantú, the author’s mother, a retired park ranger and composer-musician. She lives just a few miles from me. Knowing more now through her son’s book, I have enormous respect for the care in which she raised him, to instill the cultural values of his Mexican heritage and respect for nature. That said, I could imagine her challenges when he decided to join the US Border Patrol. Learning so in the book, it seemed unfathomable to me.

I can’t imagine what possessed me. But I decided to take Francisco’s book on my spiritual travel program in southern Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. I guess some part of me decided that reading it from a physical distance at home in northern Arizona, difficult but still easier, wasn’t appropriate. Instead, after our daily immersion with the Maya peoples and sacred traditions of those lands, I spent most nights with Francisco’s recollections. I struggled with them.

Francisco set the stage by writing of his fascination with the borderlands, wanting to know as much as he could. He disclosed that, after obtaining a degree in international relations, he desired more than intellectual knowledge. This is what led to his work as an agent for the US Border Patrol working in the hard deserts of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico between 2008 and 2012.

I doubt he held anything back in the book. Although, he does say some of those in the book are composites of different people he worked with or otherwise encountered. Locations were sometimes changed. Done so to protect privacy and, I imagine, safety in some cases. He relayed his daily life: the range of personalities and approaches of fellow agents, tracking and capturing humans in the bleakest places, witnessing desperation, hopelessness and death, the horrific acts of the drug cartels and opportunism of coyotes.

No matter what you tell yourself and how kind you may be toward asylum seekers, after a while it’s got to take a serious toll on your psyche. I was relieved when I began to pick up Francisco’s internal conflict such that he finally opted for a job removing himself from the field, and then from the Border Patrol completely.

But that brought new awareness. He’d developed a friendship with a Mexican man who, unbeknownst to Francisco, had been brought to the US illegally at age 11, married and had children who were US citizens by birth. His friend went home to Mexico to be with his dying mother but was caught attempting to re-enter and detained. Not able to just stand by, Francisco found himself on the other side. He did all he could to support his friend in navigating a legal system that cares little of personal circumstances, and otherwise helped out the family whose father was deported. At the publication of the book, they remained torn apart.

The Line Becomes a River, named a top ten book for 2018 by NPR and the Washington Post, was a hard read but a necessary one. I was personally glad the author didn’t gloss over the most difficult parts, that he was exposed to wide-ranging aspects of the border issues, and wasn’t afraid to write honestly about it. It’s a book all should read to best inform their thoughts and votes.

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I’ve spent many years developing relationships with Indigenous spiritual leaders and healers who serve their own people in the lands where I sponsor programs. Travelers’ tuitions help support the families of those involved and, through special projects, for the well-being of their communities. A range of service people are also involved and the local economy benefits. I don’t frequent areas considered unsafe. So it’s unlikely those I work with encounter the drug cartel. However, for many of them, behind the scenes of our time with them, they endure the results of acute poverty with little to no opportunity to change that state.

That hurts my soul, and extends globally to anyone seeking relief from violence, scarcity of any kind and inner demons they carry as a result. I cannot harden my heart as many can and turn away. Through a slight accident of birth and the times I was born into, I have not personally experienced these levels of hardship but a good number did down my family line.

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Altar at the Cofradia House (Brotherhood), Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. Photo: Carla Woody.

So I am yet sitting here waiting for the words to arise to adequately express the sorrow I hold for a world where everyone isn’t invited to the table, and the helplessness I feel to do anything about it except my very small part to make it so.

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The Metaphor: Borderlands

During opening circles for any of my spiritual travel programs, I invite participants to note any personal themes that run through our time together. Mine are not tourist trips but first to help preserve Indigenous traditions, and also an invitation for travelers to undertake deep inner work. What better way than spiritual journeys against the backdrop of sacred lifeways of foreign lands where we’re not within our usual comfort zone? The purpose, of course, is to carry the learnings home to create re-alignment and best live through personal values.

I invite them to note any metaphors that arise from their themes, providing a rich foundation and potential in-roads. Only this morning, as I finish writing this article, have I discovered my own coming from these travels: Borderlands.

There are the literal borderlands fraught with political issues that create great distress and tragedies. But also there are metaphysical borderlands. In this moment, what comes to me is the forbidden ground we’re told we must not cross in order to reinforce the status quo. But if we did and navigated those lands wisely, with great courage and heart, there’s the opportunity to integrate any wounded or unintegrated aspects of the self, and move through the threshold to enter an elevated life.

This is an area of personal depth and further unearthing. The Line Becomes a River  delivered it to me, gratefully while being immersed in the Maya lands and in relationship with peoples I’ve come to love.

Categories: Book Review, Global Consciousness, Indigenous Wisdom, Maya, Spiritual Evolution | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

Book Review – The Monk of Mokha

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Carla Woody

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The Monk of Mokha is a modern-day Hero’s Journey – a monumental quest – and, amazingly, it’s completely true. Mokhtar Alkhanshali, was raised in the US in poor circumstances by attentive Yemeni parents. But like a lot of young people, he couldn’t get his act together. He also distanced himself from his Yemeni culture. While other friends and family members found their place, Mokhtar wandered aimlessly through life and changed jobs frequently. That is…until one day in 2015…prompted by a friend…he looked across the street from his workplace and noticed a statue of a Yemeni man drinking coffee, an artifact left over from the long abandoned Hills Brothers coffee plant. Suddenly, 27-year-old Mokhtar received his calling, and his hair was on fire.

With some research, he discovered that Sufi monks in the isolated mountains of Yemen were the first to cultivate and brew coffee beginning in the 15th century. Over the next 200 years, Yemen owned the trade, exporting high quality coffee to Europe, starting the coffee craze. He also found that the quality of Yemeni coffee drastically declined throughout the 20th century due to limited rainfall and the growing popularity of chewing qat, a mild narcotic that had overtaken coffee fields and eroded the soil.

Mokhtar decided that he was going to revolutionize the coffee of his family’s homeland, bring it back to its former grandeur, and return to Yemeni coffee farmers the dignity and prosperity they deserve. Here are just some of the challenges: Mokhtar knew nothing about coffee and must become a top certified expert, a stringent and costly venture. He had absolutely no money. He desperately needed a mentor, someone who could show him the ropes and guide him in such a journey.  Few farmers in Yemen even attempted to cultivate the poor quality coffee the land produced, and he knew none of those who did. Maybe the worst: Just saying Yemen immediately brings to mind tragic civil war, staggering humanitarian crisis and extreme danger. Who would even invest in such a venture? Could the necessary infrastructure be put in place? How would travel even be possible? How would he dodge bullets and escape terrorists?

The Monk of Moha is the inspiring story, a very wild ride, of exactly how – in just 2 short years – Mokhtar Alkhanshali accomplished exactly what he set out to do. In 2017, his fledgling company Port of Mokha offered East Hayma Single Farmer Lot. It was given the highest score ever awarded by the Coffee Review’s grading program since its inception over 25 years ago. Best of all, Mokhtar has revived communities where only devastation lived. Port of Mokha coffee is now selling for $42 per 4 ounces.

The author Dave Eggers is to be commended for his social responsibility, having undertaken this unlikely, heroic tale. He successfully produced an insightful book that also offers an appreciation for Yemen, its people and culture against tragic circumstances the country is currently suffering. I also learned a lot about coffee.

Here’s an engaging bit of the story in video, told by Mokhtar himself on the Port of Mokha website, to entice you to read the book. Available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon and elsewhere. Highly recommend.

 

Categories: Book Review, cultural interests, Sacred Reciprocity | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: The Books of Athabaskan Native Velma Wallis

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Carla Woody

Velma Wallis was born of the Athabaskan people in a small village in remote Alaska. She grew up in the traditional way and heard the oral history of her tribe and others in the region through her mother. She’s documented two of those through Two Old Women and Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun.

TwoOldWomenTwo Old Women tells of two elders who had lost their usefulness, often falling into complaining in the face of decline. As tradition holds, the duty of providing for them fell to their extended family and others of the tribe, which they did. But the tribe fell upon hard times. Food was almost nonexistent and some successive winters brutal. Finally, the chief made a decision, when the tribe departed in search for a more hospitable home, the two old women were left behind in favor of tribal survival. This meant they were leaving the elders to a certain death. Two Old Women discloses the internal conflict many of the tribe experienced and the process of the women as they faced a fate they did not choose, and the unexpected outcomes.

BirdGirlBird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun is about a girl and boy, living in separate camps of the Gwich’in people. Neither fit in. At a young age, Bird Girl’s father had taught her to hunt and roam along with her brothers. Having tasted that freedom, she took no interest in the never-ending burden of women’s work or taking a husband. Finally pushed to fall in line, she chose to leave home to make her way on her own.

The boy Dagoo was told about The Land of the Sun somewhere to the south where the sun shone all the time, and it was warm, unlike the frozen ground where he lived. His elders said that some of their people had gone in search for this place but turned back, while others went on and never returned. Dagoo was compelled to wander, to explore what potentials may be had beyond the small confines of tribal expectations and limited grounds. After being given an ultimatum to conform, he left in search of The Land of the Sun.

Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun is about the need to belong, and the choices and consequences of rejecting what doesn’t fit.

Both books are about the meaning and pressures of tribal community and historical, territorial violence between tribes as well as first experiences with European intruders. Told in a straightforward manner, they are impactful eye openers that caused me to consider the choices I have taken in my own life.

Available on Amazon and some public libraries.

Categories: Book Review, cultural interests, Indigenous Wisdom | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

As Good Things Come to Pass

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Carla Woody

With things the way they have been for a while now…when offensive acts strike at my core values…when I find myself becoming so incensed by it all that I’m distracted and even feel sick or paralyzed…I know it’s time to step back and take stock. I know it’s time to note in what ways my life has meaning, how my own thoughts and actions matter and contribute to the beauty of the world.

Recently a good friend shared on social media Spiritual Integrity and Preservation, a 2014 article I’d written. It brought me back – front and center – to the intent that navigates the path that chose me. Acknowledgement is an important aspect of staying on track. It’s good to know where I’ve been, to draw it around me like a cloak, to shelter me and strengthen intent in the midst of the fire storm…and then keep on going.

That article was a celebration of sorts for a dream I didn’t know I had when it all began. When the dream grounded itself into reality, don’t be fooled into thinking I knew where it would lead. I had no concept at the time. I just trusted the energy it contained and somehow knew to follow it. I had to because it wouldn’t be denied, and things began to fall into place.

I believe we all have such compelling dreams living in our hearts. One just for each of us…waiting for us to say yes to the invitation. To grab it and go.

The article I refer to has to do with the work of Kenosis Spirit Keepers, the nonprofit extension of Kenosis. It tracks the evolutionary process of the work, going back to 2007, in helping to preserve Indigenous traditions. When my friend posted on social media, it caused me to look at what else has happened since 2014.

It brought back some wonderful memories. In 2016, I sponsored a second pilgrimage from Bolivia all the way to the high altitude Q’ero village of Ccochamocco in the Peruvian Andes, finally ending in Cusco. It was a very special journey bringing Q’ero, Maya, Hopi and Aymara Wisdom Keepers together and participants from across the US. In that journey one of the Elder spokespersons for the Hopi religious leader accompanied us to further validate the discovery by Hopi Marvin Lalo the previous year of the Hopi migration petroglyph on a huge slab at Puma Punku next to Tiwanaku in Bolivia. This has great significance if you realize the story of Hopi migration paths from South America previously existed only in Hopi oral history.

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A powerful despacho ceremony with Q’ero, Aymara, Hopi and Maya on the Bolivian waters of Lake Titicaca on the way to the Island of the Moon, where Inka priestesses engaged in the Great Mystery.

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Q’ero friends are offering a despacho ceremony in respect to the land and its spirits, asking permission before we descend to Tiwanaku.

It’s also caused me to look to the future. In January 2019, we are sponsoring Eli PaintedCrow of Yaqui-Maya heritage to accompany us to Guatemala and Mexico for the Maya spiritual travel program. While Eli has had direct access to her Yaqui traditions, she knew nothing of her Maya lineage. When I discovered this, I invited her. I can in no way project any outcomes, but Eli has a son and grandson. I’m guessing it will be important for her to tell them of the strong, proud people they hold in their blood.

Because I’m right upon another important anniversary, I’m sharing Spiritual Integrity and Preservation here. It will link to two other articles – The Last Spirit Keeper and The Ninth Evolution of the Spirit Keepers Journey (with video) –  that complete the history.

In 2009 an important tradition began, first started by Hopi elder Harold Joseph who accepted an invitation to accompany me on my spiritual travel program Entering the Maya Mysteries. As his religious leader’s emissary, the purpose was to reconnect with relations, those from Hopi migration paths…

Don Antonio Martinez and Harold Joseph

Don Antonio Martinez and Harold Joseph at the Lacandón Maya village of Najá in 2009.

 …The intent I hold for spiritual travel has remained the same from the start. It is not to co-opt Indigenous traditions. It is to offer respect through our presence and to hold space that these sacred ways continue…If in the process we visitors are deeply touched—and we are—we bring this difference home. Who we are in the world is influenced…and felt by our families, friends and communities. Core spiritual elements are strengthened…

Read more.

With many thanks to Linda Sohner who started me on this odyssey of remembrance.

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For more information on spiritual travel programs to Hopi, Peru, Guatemala and Mexico, go here. For more on the work of Kenosis Spirit Keepers, go here.

 

 

Categories: Global Consciousness, Indigenous Wisdom, Sacred Reciprocity, Spiritual Evolution | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: Mariette in Ecstasy

Posted on September 16, 2018 by Carla Woody

Mariette-in-EcstasyMost books reach a logical conclusion. After I finished Mariette in Ecstasy, I just sat there attempting to sort through what I even felt. Stunned in some ways, I suppose. Mystified to say the least. But then, the subject matter of this book deals with the interface between religious mysticism and human nature. A pat answer rarely rests in either.

Since early adolescence Mariette Baptiste feels a draw, the need for direct connection with her savior. By the time she enters the convent at seventeen as a postulate, her practices toward that end are well grounded. Many hours of meditation, prayer or other types of spiritual cultivation can make the veil quite thin. She soon goes into trance regularly, professes to speak directly to Jesus and bleeds from great holes in the hands, feet and side.  At the same time, she seems to be stalked by demons.

The author offers quite believable elements in the life of a stigmatic, not only the passion, and suffering but also – surprisingly – eroticism.

Beyond this are other complications. Mariette comes from privilege, and she’s quite pretty. She enters a modest convent in upstate New York in 1906 and severely disrupts its placid life. This is where human nature comes in. The full range of reaction comes out in spades. There are the suspicions, jealousies, hidden agendas, intrigue, attraction, sexual fantasies and worship…wrapped around religious life.

All of this interspersed against the backdrop of the daily tasks, masses and foreshadowing of Mariette’s interrogation.

Rather than a novel, it could just as well be a narrative nonfiction account of religious fervor and typical convent life. Well researched, sometimes graphic, it was provocative and held all the necessary components of a good mystery.

I find it remarkable that the same author who wrote Desperadoes and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford would also write Mariette in Ecstasy.

I found my copy at the public library. It’s also available at Amazon.

Categories: Book Review, Contemplative Life | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

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