Sunday, December 20, 2009

Caring For Each Other, Northern Goddess

Here is one of the better visions of compassion and one world view that supports it.

Caring for Each Other

The Buddha has suggested that we are without a mother and father to take care of things for us. Mother Earth, once thought to be all-forgiving and capable of absorbing any abuse we could heap upon her, is not the infinitely benevolent resource we thought she was. As we learn of our own mothers at a certain point of maturity, Mother Earth can and does get worn down by giving and forgiving in the face of our persistent demands. And our Father who is in heaven, though perhaps immensely old and lord over a host of devas (as the Buddhists view him), is nevertheless subject to the laws of karma and is not sufficiently omnipotent to make it all work out for us in the end.

If we do not care for one another, who else will care for us? Who among us has the right to say of another, "He is of no use to us?" For better or worse, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Learning how to care for one another is a central part of the path and of the practice.

- Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., "Medicine for the World," from the Summer 2008 Tricycle.

I feel deep accord with Andrew, though I would add that Father God takes his less than sufficiently powerful position by agreement with us and with the planet, with Mother Earth as well. He could clean this up but He won't, because He promised not to. That is why this is God's Permitted World, not God's World.

I take the position that the primary Trinity is the Taoist one, Heaven, Earth, Man and that we are equally pivotal through the point of soul, co-creators of our destiny in ourselves and on the planet. This is by the deeper collective agreement that upholds the thematic personal agreements that we keep or break in individual lifetimes.

But I am too smitten to leave it at that. I require by my erotic nature that Mother Earth take another aspect. I need a lover. I need not only the triune aspect of the world's co-creation and the quaternity of my crucifixion here and yours, I need as well the duality of communion and the orgasmic nature of encounter with holiness within this lifetime, with Goddess and with you.

Northern Goddess

Your heart is thunder
and you stand so lightning struck
with your smoky hair,
a goddess, true north
for the creatures of the dry
found south of your lines.

March 10, 2009 7:34 AM

16 comments:

  1. You are simply smokin' this week my friend....

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  2. Thank you, darlin'...You live upside down from me, in summer to my winter and a day ahead. I have thought before how odd it could be to commute back and forth half yearly from Sydney to Portland, depart mid Fall from either place and arrive mid Spring at the other. I could live in perpetual Spring/Summer/Fall and skip early Spring/Winter/late Fall entirely, skipping Sydney's by being in Portland, and skipping Portland's by being in Sydney.

    Because this is possible, even easy, there may be several people who actually have lives like this. I wonder how this changes a person's perception of life.

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  3. Christopher, I love your preamble here. I agree entirely, except I would change the word 'need' to 'truly desire' a lover. But the highs of ecstasy that can be found in honoring God and Goddess through physical union or worth seeking in this otherwise often quite brutal world. Hugs Christopher! And happy holidays!

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  4. Thank you for posting this wonderful mediation on purpose. This belief is central to my own existence:
    "Who among us has the right to say of another, "He is of no use to us?" For better or worse, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Learning how to care for one another is a central part of the path and of the practice."

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  5. Cat, I thank you for your observation...you may have distinguished between man and woman, one of the true imbalances on this planet. Woman is born to deeply and truly desire this union but can honestly say "I do not need it". Man is born in need of this union and can build on top of it edifaces of desire, but the need remains. These two positions drive the differences between us. It also makes the renunciation of communion a fundamentally different thing to us as well. To live a life in compensation of lacking an actual need is different when compared to living a life of renunciation of desire.

    Men are more fragile without women than women are without men.

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  6. Karen, me too of course. I shorthand the whole discussion saying I choose to live in the Bodhisattva ideal.

    I have married the two ideas here to mark the two poles of my life. In my freedom to choose, I vow a Bodhisattva life. I also accomodate the driven character of my need for love and passion. The one is compassion of course and so I am motivated by passion and compassion.

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  7. "God's Permitted World" I like that. So true. I was just realizing last night that we all have something to teach. We all have story worthy of a listen. We are a world library, each jacket different, some more well read. Best sellers there are, but once in awhile you come across that dusty book that holds the gem...the one you needed, that propels you forward. It was written just for you.

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  8. Annie, that phrase was given to me by an angry man who was tired of listening to the platitudes, the ones similar to "nothing happens in God's world by mistake". That is so obviously true of God's World but so obviously not true of the planet. He pointed this out at the time I was ready to listen. He said mistakes are possible in the world that God permits. It all fell open for me at that moment, the distinctions between God's World and the world we live in, full of agreements and disagreements and accidents in the gaps between. It is as it must be or free will is a sham. More than one theologian founders on the rocks of free will. I believe Calvinists were forced to deny free will in the face of predestination.

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  9. Beautiful, Christopher. A midwinter delight! I always do love goddess themes; why I enjoy the goddess aspect more than the god, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because of what Christianity has done to the god-image. The Stone man, Green man, those ancient god-aspects do appeal to me in a primal way, I have to admit.

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  10. And there stands Jozien :) I once was going to steal these words of yours -- I remember them well -- I wanted to make a photopoem from them and never did. I wish I had. I suppose I still can someday.

    A beautiful post, Christopher.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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