Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Hoodies, Menorahs and Rainbow Flags

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Have you ever experienced the power of solidarity?

Since the news about the senseless murder of Trayvon Martin has erupted into our collective consciousness, several people of all races and genders have taken to wearing hoodies as a symbolic act of solidarity with young black men who are violently attacked and even killed simply because of their gender and race. Although the donning of hoodies will not make racism go away overnight, and in fact will do little to address the insidious forms systemic racism can take, I see it as a meaningful gesture if it is an authentic expression that people are not willing to stand by and allow minority groups to continue to be the target of ruthless attacks.

Solidarity as a means of nonviolent resistance goes way back. Jesus’ table solidarity with the marginalized people in his society — eating with tax collectors and “sinners” (those too poor to participate in their religion’s sacrificial requirements) — was one of the things that led to his crucifixion. Gandhi, although a well-educated lawyer who could have lived a life of comfort and privilege, chose instead to practice solidarity with the poor and untouchables of India, living a life of simplicity, wearing a loincloth, and ultimately paying with his life for his stance of solidarity with the Muslim minority in what had become a divided India. Julia Butterfly practiced solidarity when she lived for more than two years 180 feet off the ground in the branches of Luna, a 1500 year old giant redwood tree, to save the redwood forest from being clear cut. And, of course, there is the story about King Christian X and the people of Denmark foiling the Nazis’ attempts to round up the Jews in their country by collectively wearing the Star of David.

The latter example, by the way, never happened. Not in a literal sense that is. Neither the Danish Jews nor the Danish King ever wore the Star of David, but even though the story isn’t factually true, it is metaphorically true in that most of the Jews in Denmark were spared because the majority of Danes protected them, demonstrating that when enough people practice nonviolent solidarity, oppressive forces become powerless.

The story about King Christian, even though not factual, helped stem anti-Semitic violence in Billings, Montana in 1993 when a white supremacist threw a cinder block through the window of a Jewish family that was displaying a menorah during Chanukah. Margaret McDonald, executive director of the Montana Association of Churches, was inspired by the story of King Christian and launched a movement that resulted in thousands of non-Jewish residents of Billings displaying menorahs in their windows in defense of their Jewish neighbors. For a while the bigotry intensified. White supremacist vandals broke windows and threatened some of the people who had taken up the cause, but in the end the violence and intimidation ceased.

I was in turn inspired by the example of the people of Billings when we had a similar experience in our neighborhood in 1999. In that case it was a gay man who was being singled out. The rainbow flag he had flying outside his home was repeatedly ripped down by college students who lived in the area who were also taunting him with homophobic slurs. When he told me what was going on, I asked our landlady if we could fly a rainbow flag outside our apartment as well. She took the idea to the neighborhood association and soon there were dozens of rainbow flags hanging outside homes in our neighborhood, and the homophobic attacks subsided.

Practicing solidarity is always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous because we place ourselves alongside those being targeted, coming to understand more deeply the fear, discrimination and hatred that many have to deal with on a daily basis.  That’s why a white man walking down the street wearing a hoodie isn’t really doing much to challenge racist attitudes, but if he’s wearing a hoodie walking alongside a black man wearing a hoodie and they’re walking through a gated community, well, that’s another story.

All bigots and oppressive systems depend first and foremost on one thing: that people in the majority group who are not being targeted will sit quietly by while others are. The whole system of oppression expects that people will put their own safety first rather than risking their well being to ally themselves with the oppressed. When enough people in the majority group are willing to stand alongside those who are being singled out, however, the cycles of violence grind to a halt.

Solidarity gains its power because at its heart it erodes the fundamental belief that underlies all bigotry and oppression: that separateness is real. In that sense, practicing solidarity is a profoundly spiritual act because it overtly enacts the underlying truth that all life originates from and is an expression of the same Source.

Yet if we believe that the only goal of nonviolent solidarity is to protect the vulnerable we miss what is perhaps the most potent potential outcome: the healing of the bigot. The bigot is someone who is trapped in the illusion of separateness. When faced with acts of solidarity, his worldview is challenged and sometimes even overturned. This is why, if solidarity is to be effective, it must be nonviolent, for to engage in violence against the oppressor is to buy into the same falsehood that he himself is caught in, that of otherness.

The word solidarity itself conveys the essential reality that in the end we cannot be divided along lines of race, gender, class, orientation, or any other category because these divisions are simply the product of our minds’ illusion.  Solidarity is based in the knowing that when one of us bleeds, we all bleed.

The Inner Climate Change

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The butterfly emerges out of an experience of dissolution.

A few nights ago I had a dream that has lingered with me. I didn’t remember the whole dream, but in the part that I did remember I was looking through a window at a row of enormous butterfly bushes that were teeming with hundreds of butterflies large and small. Some had blue wings, some orange and black, others yellow and black, and several of them had markings I had never seen before. Somehow in the dream I knew that the cause of this explosive outbreak of butterflies was global warming.

Global warming has certainly been on my mind since, like much of the nation, we’ve been having a heat wave in Philadelphia. The daffodils and forsythia bloomed more than a month early, the azaleas are already opening and many of the flowering trees, including the magnolias, peaked before winter had even officially ended.

I know I’m not alone in my concern about the situation and what it forebodes about what’s to come. Shawn Lawrence Otto wrote in his March 19th Huffington Post article “Cherry Blossoms, Ice Boxes, BMWs and Climate Change” that this heat wave is “one of the most extreme meteorological events in US history.” Temperatures across much of the nation have been running 20 to 40 degrees above normal, and at the time when the article was released 2000 U.S. temperature records had already been broken this year.

With extreme weather becoming the new norm it’s becoming harder and harder to live in the illusion that climate change isn’t upon us. Those of us who have recognized for years that our policies and behaviors must change are probably not surprised by the disturbing way 2012 has begun, but even so it is unsettling to witness the predictions coming true. I suppose many of us are wondering if it’s already too late, if our species has dawdled so long, refusing out of greed or laziness or lack of imagination to make the radical changes necessary, that we have already passed Earth’s tipping point and life as we have known it is over.

One would think this heat wave, as well as the other climate catastrophes that we’ve been witnessing in recent years — droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires — would be a wake up call to our leaders, but sadly the political conversation in this election year has, if anything, turned even more toward rhetoric bolstering the status quo of our fossil fuel economy. This fact is sad, though not surprising since, as we are well aware, the political process is fueled by corporate interests. More and more, the government has no stake in leading us toward a viable future, but rather in simply amassing wealth for the wealthy. (A situation, I might add, which could be rectified if The People demand the passage of the Constitutional Amendment that has recently been introduced which states that corporations are not people.)

So if things are so dire, why in the world did my dream depict an explosion of butterflies resulting from global warming?

Over the last twenty years I have worked with my dreams and I have found them to be an extraordinary source of wisdom. They have often, in fact, provided me with information that has changed my life. Dreams, like mythology, use the language of symbol, and if we want to understand what they are trying to say to us we have to step out of our literalistic mindset. This dream that I had was not saying that there will be a literal explosion of butterflies upon the planet due to global warming. (In fact, it is far more likely that butterfly populations will plummet.) But the Butterfly as an archetypal symbol is one of the most potent symbols imaginable for radical transformation.

David Korten, in his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, refers to the work of biologist Elisabet Sahtouris who explored the metamorphosis that the monarch caterpillar undergoes in becoming a butterfly. Korten writes:

The caterpillar is a voracious consumer that devotes its life to gorging itself on nature’s bounty. When it has had its fill, it fastens itself to a convenient twig and encloses itself in a chrysalis. Once snug inside, it undergoes a crisis as the structures of its cellular tissue begin to dissolve into an organic soup.

Yet guided by some deep inner wisdom, a number of organizer cells begin to rush around gathering other cells to form imaginal buds, initially independent multicellular structures that begin to give form to the organs of a new creature. Correctly perceiving a threat to the old order, but misdiagnosing the source, the caterpillars’ still intact immune system attributes the threat to the imaginal buds and attacks them as alien intruders.

The imaginal buds prevail by linking up with one another in a cooperative effort that brings forth a new being of great beauty, wondrous possibilities, and little identifiable resemblance to its progenitor. In its rebirth, the monarch butterfly lives lightly on Earth, serves the regeneration of life as a pollinator, and migrates thousands of miles to experience life’s possibilities in ways the earthbound caterpillar could not imagine. [p. 74-75]

I believe this is what the dream was wanting to convey: that global warming is bringing a transformation upon the planet just as radical as that of the caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly. The prevailing ego paradigm (Caterpillar) that currently governs the human world and which asserts a distorted understanding of “self-interest” is dissolving, and a new consciousness of oneness, of unity with the Earth, with all of Life (Butterfly) is emerging. It can be no other way, because once eco-systems begin to collapse the illusion that any of us are distinct individuals separate from the rest of the web of life collapses as well.

The way I see it though, once this new consciousness emerges, possibilities will present themselves that we are, at this point, unable to imagine. I believe that, like the caterpillar, we have encoded into us a destiny quite extraordinary that will only come into being when the old self dies.

As extreme as the climate change happening on the planet may be, there is an equally extreme shift happening within the climate of the human mind and the consciousness through which we perceive ourselves and the world. The two climate changes are not distinct from one another. They are intricately intertwined, and one of the most potent ways each of us can contribute to the transformation on Earth is to attend to the transformation within, surrendering our ego attachments, releasing our us/them ways of thinking, and trusting that there are far greater forces at work here than just the human will, forces which are helping to birth a new reality on this planet.

 

The Life of a Heartist

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For many years I have done drawings, usually when I’m on retreat, that help me tune into my intuitive knowing.  We get plenty of practice in our culture tuning into the analytical aspects of ourselves, but rarely are we taught how to listen to other ways of knowing, and that concerns me because there is much our analytical minds cannot do.  They cannot tell us what we really value, what our life’s purpose really is, what our soul really desires.  The analytical mind can dissect information, but it can never provide us with true wisdom.

In this drawing practice, which is a spiritual practice more than an artistic one, I begin by drawing a circle on a piece of paper, then I lay out all of my colored pencils before me.  When they are all spread out in front of me I scan them, letting my eye rest on each one in turn, and as I do I listen inwardly for an intuitive prompting, a nudge that says yes, this one.  Or no, not that one.  I pull out each of the yes pencils as I am being guided and then put the other pencils away.

Then I begin.  I look at the colors and listen for which of them wants to be picked up first, then I pick the pencil up, put its point to the paper and begin to draw, continually listening inwardly, sensing which direction the line wants to go and when it wants to stop.  Then I set it down, and look again at the colors, asking which one wants to go next.  As the image continues to evolve I listen for where the growing edge is as well, and that is where I focus next.  The image itself isn’t intended to depict anything, but the practice is a potent way for me of accessing my deeper Self and listening to my heart.

When I was on retreat last month I was contemplating what it means to live a life like that, guided by the heart, to be a heartist.  It can be frightening for the ego and the analytical mind to let go and let the heart lead, because when the heart leads, you never know where it is all headed.  The path, just as the drawing’s pattern, isn’t nicely laid out ahead of time.  It is only revealed as you follow the inner guidance, one step at a time.

There is an interesting thing that has happened to me in the last few years.  Somewhere along the line I started to experience what I call Heart Glow.  I have a sensation in my heart chakra that I can only describe as a sensation of glowing that comes in response to certain ideas that float into my mind or certain encounters I have.  My heart has become a divining rod for me telling me when I’m on track with something that is true to my core, true to my deeper Self.  And as I move forward with my life path I am listening for that Heart Glow to tell me what the next step is, trusting my heart’s wisdom even though I cannot see the full picture.

Follow your heart.

I find that when I let go of the ego anxieties and the analytical mind’s priorities and listen to my heart, I am led.  All that is asked of me is that I listen and trust, and take the next step.

Listen and trust, and take the next step.

Listen and trust, and take the next step.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, when I step back and look at things from a different angle, something quite surprising is revealed that had been emerging all along, even though I didn’t consciously realize it.

The startling teaching that my retreat drawing gave me this time was just how trustworthy my heart is as a guide and that, in fact, it can create far more beauty than I ever could have knowingly planned.

 

 

Crossing the Sea

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Which shore do you see yourself on?

Several years ago an artist friend of mine was looking across a field and suddenly the field appeared to him as a red sea. Bo sensed the vision was intended for me, so he painted a water color wash of what he had seen and gave it to me.

When I contemplated the painting, the sea looked like an enormous, unsurmountable obstacle, as the Red Sea must have appeared to the Hebrews in the mythic story of the Exodus. Fleeing Pharaoh’s army, horses and chariots bearing down on them, the Hebrews’ situation appeared absolutely hopeless.

One day as I meditated on the painting, something extraordinary happened. I saw the sea as something that was behind me. I was on the other side of it, looking back. I had left behind the life of bondage. I was in the land of freedom.

What I experienced in that moment was a quantum leap of perception, and I realized how, when one’s perception changes, so does one’s inner reality.Continue Reading

Dream. Then Do.

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In some Native American circles, Lizard represents the capacity to dream.

One of our local colleges has launched a new ad campaign which I first noticed a few weeks ago while riding the bus. In the front of the bus behind the driver there is a plexiglass panel which is where they often display ad posters. That day there was a poster with a picture of a young woman, dreamily gazing upward, smiling, and next to her the words: “Don’t Dream. Do.”

While I understand the intent of the campaign — to encourage people to get off their duffs and do what needs doing to activate their potential — I think they are making a tremendous mistake in telling people not to dream.

A lot of us are actually pretty good at doing, the problem is that so often our doing isn’t in accord with our true selves or highest good. We may just be living out the expectations others have of us rather than really exploring what it is we want for ourselves. If I were designing the college’s ad campaign it would say: “Dream. Then Do.”

It’s essential for us, after all, to engage our dreaming capacity because it is the first step in manifesting the future we want, and actually the picture on the ad is instructive in one way: it shows that the young woman, as she dreams, is smiling. That, my friends, is the key because it is our joy that leads us to our true path. It is like an exuberant, tail-wagging dog that is taking us for a walk, leading us with its own gleeful nose to our truest treasures.

Rather than squelching our capacity to dream we need to cultivate it. When we are stepping into a new life for ourselves we need a vigorous and bold imagination to help catapult us beyond the restrictive boundaries imposed by self or society; only in that way can we begin to live into our fullest potential.

Then, yes, doing becomes essential. Taking the dream and translating it into actions, no matter how small, is the way we honor it and begin to prepare the way for it to come forth. When we’ve taken time to dream in order to get in touch with our own inner wisdom and true direction, then our doing will be in the service of manifesting our own life purpose, rather than settling for the life others have told us to live.

Into the Quiet

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In the quiet I can listen.

I spent the better part of the last two weeks on retreat at Ghost Ranch in the high desert of northern New Mexico, where the land is spacious and quiet, where often the only sound is that of the echoing caw of ravens flying along the cliff face of the surrounding mesas, where the night sky, unobscured by city lights, displays thousands upon thousands of stars and the soft whisper of the Milky Way can be seen stretching from horizon to horizon.

I have been going there for a couple of weeks most winters for the past 11 years, and I would not be overstating the case to say that those times of retreat have been a lifeline to my soul. While I’m there I hike, do dream work and make art, walk the labyrinth and listen for its wisdom for me.

A couple of nights after I arrived was the night of the full moon. After the sun went down and the land began to grow darker, I left my room and hiked to the labyrinth that sits in front of the cliff of a high mesa. In the dimming light I walked its slow, winding path which is always a powerful symbol for me of the journey of life that wends this way this way and that. I finally reached the labyrinth’s center and there I waited. The edge of moonlight was making its way slowly across the landscape from the west as the moon rose higher and higher, first illuminating the far hills and rock formations in the distance with an ethereal silver light that gradually made its way toward me. The light gathered, brighter and brighter, behind the rim of the mesa in front of me, until finally a sliver of moon slid above the cliff, piercing my eyes with its brilliance, and I stood there weeping with amazement and gratitude.

My time of retreat reminded me, as it always does, of how cluttered my life can become. How, like the artificial lights of the city that drown out the mystery of the night, my culture’s priorities on productivity, activity, and being constantly plugged-in crowd out the wisdom of my own heart and soul. I think it’s a common dilemma; most of us live our lives deluged by external messages and demands, rarely making time or space to quiet and replenish ourselves at the well of our own Being.

The challenge, as always, in returning from a time of retreat is to find ways to weave its lessons and wisdom into my daily life. Since I’ve been back, one thing I’ve been doing is limiting my time on-line to 30 minutes a day. (I even set the timer!) I’m looking at it as a spiritual practice, a pre-Lenten fast if you will, which I intend to continue. What I am discovering is that it allows me to stay in touch more consistently with the calm clarity that resides in my core.

On retreat, whenever I step out into the night to stargaze I have to let my eyes adjust for a while to the darkness before I can take in the wonder of what is overhead. That process is a metaphor for me of what is required if I want to connect with my soul. I have to remove myself from the onslaught of all the “artificial lights” that surround me, the values and messages that bombard me with shallow understandings of what’s important, worthy, and most of all, real. Only then, when I let myself stand in the mystery of the inner quiet and abide in the darkness of Unknowing can I begin to perceive the true, numinous light of my existence. Only then can I gaze out from the center of my timeless self upon a cosmos from which I have come and with which I am completely and forever one.

Just Sow

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By not attaching to results we help release abundance.

Many years ago, when I was living in the Andes of Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer, one day I was accompanying a Quichua farmer as he went out to  sow barley. When we got to his field high up on a hillside, he loaded the barley seed into a metal canister he had that had a crank on the side with a mechanism that flung the seed out in all directions.  After he’d loaded up the canister, he started walking along the edge of his field, turning the crank as he walked. The seed went everywhere, some of it far beyond the edges of the field, into the weeds and the rocks and the road, and my first thought was, “Oh no! He’s wasting seed!” But he didn’t seem to care about that.  He just kept walking deliberately, back and forth across his field, letting the barley fly where it would, interested only in letting a good bit of it land in the fertile soil where it would be able to root in and grow.

Watching him work, I was reminded of one of Jesus’ teachings. He once told a parable about a sower who went out to sow seed. Some of the seed fell onto the path where it was eaten by birds, some fell on rocky soil, and some on weed-infested soil, none of which, obviously, bore any fruit. But some of the seed fell on fertile soil and produced a bumper crop.

I had always heard the parable interpreted in its traditional — rather judgmental — way, as an analogy for different types of people, some of whom are receptive to divine wisdom and some who aren’t. But watching the Quichua farmer sow his seed that day, I came to realize that Jesus was probably making a point about the sower as much as about the soil, encouraging people to live their lives as the sower sows the seed, casting their gifts out into the world with abandon and not being preoccupied with the outcome.

The term non-attachment has found its way into the mainstream, usually within Buddhist contexts although it was at the heart of Jesus’ teaching as well, and this parable of his makes me wonder how often we hold back on sharing our gifts because we are overly attached to the results. Oftentimes, if we aren’t entirely sure our gifts will be well received or will bear fruit we may not share them at all, and in our attempts to direct and control the outcome of our efforts, we end up withholding the best of ourselves.

It can be discouraging, after all, when you offer something and it comes to naught; it can make you want to hold back the next time around. But Jesus’ parable and the lesson of my Quichua friend encourage me to offer what I have anyway, knowing it’s not my place to try to dictate the outcome of my efforts or try to control onto what sort of soil they might land.

It isn’t always discouragement, though, that gets in the way of us sharing ourselves freely.  Sometimes our withholding comes out of a scarcity mentality.  We can fall into the trap of believing that if we “squander” our gifts in unreceptive environments, we’ll somehow deplete our supply.  That isn’t possible of course, because, unlike the farmer whose seed is in fact finite, our innate gifts flow from an abundant, infinite Source, so the more we let them flow, the more they flow.

Letting go of results can be tremendously liberating, and over time I’ve come to see that the only way the Universe can unleash abundance in and through my life is for me to live like the sower, releasing all my attachment to the outcome.  The only thing that’s asked of me is that I just sow.

 

 

The Gift of Surrender

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When have you surrendered to something you could no longer fight?

Many years ago my spouse and I took a vacation in the Ozarks during an unusually warm spell in late December. One day, since it was so mild, we decided to go canoeing. We located a canoe rental place and one of the employees loaded the canoe in his truck and drove us up river.

Just as he was dropping us off, he told us that nobody had canoed down since the severe floods that had come through earlier that year, so there might be debris in the river. His warning made me uneasy because, although my husband had experience canoeing, it was my first time.

We got our canoe into the water–I managed to climb in without tipping it over–and once we set out my anxiety began to lift. It was a gorgeous day and I was enjoying paddling along with the gentle current. We came on a few mild rapids that made the ride a bit more exciting, but for the most part  the river was tranquil.

We came to a bend in the river where it forked around a small island. Because the riverbank obstructed our view of the left fork and the island obstructed our view of the right we couldn’t see which side was the better to take, so we just took a chance and steered to the left.

Just as we came around the bend, we saw that there was a fallen tree blocking most of the channel. We both started paddling as hard as we could to get the canoe far enough over to the right to clear the tree, and for a moment it looked like we were going to make it. The bow and I cleared the snag but the back of the canoe didn’t. A branch caught my husband in the chest, and we capsized.

We grabbed the canoe and were dragging it toward the island when I saw that my backpack was floating away. I reached out to grab it. The current caught me and started carrying me downstream.

I tried as hard as I could to swim to the shore, but the current was too strong. Even though it was a mild day, it was December and the frigid water saturated my jeans, my parka, my shoes. It flowed beneath my clothing, against my bare skin. I was frantic. As the river carried me further and further downstream, I knew there was a very real possibility I could die.

I couldn’t fight the current. It was simply stronger than I was. So eventually I did the only thing I could do. I let the river have me. I surrendered.

Just as I surrendered, the most profound peace came over me. I was awestruck at the beauty surrounding me–the rolling landscape, the bare trees, the blue sky, the music of the water lapping against my body. “I might die,”I thought, “but this is so beautiful!”

It was a moment of revelation for me. My circumstances were just as dire as they had been a moment before, but by surrendering to them my panic had instantly shifted into a profound peace.

Eventually there was a piece of land jutting out into the river that I managed to grab hold of and I was able to climb ashore, and though what happened next is a story unto itself, with its own lesson that perhaps I’ll tell about some other time, for now I am letting myself revisit the deep peace that came upon me in that moment of complete surrender.

As I look back over my life I can safely say that the most significant spiritual moments I have ever had have not come as a result of my striving, but as a result of my surrendering. It makes me wonder if people in our society often feel spiritually unfulfilled because surrender is not something we are taught to do. We idolize the fighters and disdain the “quitters.” But there are times when quitting is the only sane choice.

Buddhists call this surrender to what is non-resistance. The Tao te Ching speaks of it as yielding. Jesus spoke of it as giving oneself over to the divine will. This willingness to let go–so terrifying to the ego–is at the heart of all spiritual life.

Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the prayer which was made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous. Known as the Serenity Prayer, the first four lines are the most familiar:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I appreciate the insight in Niebuhr’s prayer because it articulates the dance we do as humans. Sometimes we need to do what is required to correct circumstances that need correcting. But oftentimes the harder thing is to surrender to that which is.

In my experience though, it isn’t serenity that makes me able to accept the things that I cannot change. Serenity is what comes when I do.