Archive for June, 2010

I have been invited recently to come pick blueberries on a fellow’s farm in south Georgia; he planted several hundred blueberry bushes several years ago, intending to create a retirement business for himself.  For whatever reason, he instead invites folks to come help themselves to his blueberries for free. 

My own history with harvesting food from the land is long and varied; we had a vegetable garden as I was growing up, one of the things my mother did very well.  Later, I would become interested in gardening organically and growing from the land as a means to be self reliant.  It was something I realized I loved, as each year the garden would get bigger and I would enthusiastically can and freeze food to winter us over.  At our Asheville place, we had an organic mini-farm that included vegetables, herbs, fruit orchard, and blueberries.

I have not gardened for some years due to the moving about we’ve done in our spiritual journey (www.berrytrip.us).  I tried gardening in Colorado, and did great with the cold weather stuff, but found the lack of heat in the summer to be uninspiring, as did my tomato plants.

There is something so delightful to me about accepting food directly from the land.  It feels like an offering, a bestowing of blessings, to have the warm, heavy ripeness of a tomato fall into your hand, or feel the vibrancy of a yellow squash fresh off the vine.  Picking peaches, plums or apples from the tall trees was like stealing candy from a baby…free food falling out of the sky!  What a gift nature gives us in this simple pleasure.

I was reminded of my joy in this uncomplicated interchange when I accepted the invitation and met our friends out in the wilds of the blueberry fields.  Row upon row of tall bushes, groaning with blueberries greeted me.  My inner kid got so excited…Where to start? 

I was moved spontaneously to reach up and touch the first bush I came to, and to thank it.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I accepted the berry that came easily into my fingers, yielding to the slightest touch.  It was ripe.  Ah, life is good.

It was that day that I was shown yet another lesson from nature, this time from the blueberries. 

Nature is a perfect teacher, if we will but pay attention.  Nature is in perfect balance, self corrects when something is changed in the system, is neutral in its politics, and gives us so much support that we take for granted.  I fell in love with nature as my teacher very young; it was safe, honest, and direct.  I’ve been grateful to be reminded over my life of this precious guide and resource.

On this day, the blueberries reminded me of a concept I have been taught over and over, but perhaps haven’t fully integrated: “Go Where the Love Is.”   

As I picked through the hot, humid morning, I noticed that some of the blueberries in a cluster would come off easily into my hands, while others were more resistant to let go.  The riper the blueberry, the easier it releases from the stem.  It is Nature’s way of protecting a species from dying out…the ripe fruit (or vegetable) will come away from its Source as if agreeing to go with us, whereas the fruit that isn’t done coming to optimal fruition will cling to its Source, like a child holding to it’s mama in preschool.  “Noooooo!  I’m not ready yet!”  Brilliant.  Nature’s built-in boundaries. 

And yet, we can ignore this gentle limit-setting.  We can pick the fruit before it is ripe, we can make a baby be born before it is optimal, we can force our way into a community and expect to be welcomed.  We force the unripe fruit, and Nature has one less blueberry to bring to its fullest expression (and we eat unripe fruit and get a tummy ache).

As I watched this phenomenon over the morning, it translated into pictures of times in my own life when I have tried to force a situation to work when it just wasn’t meant to be.  We are free will beings, after all…we can ignore the good advice and example that nature provides us and free-will ourselves right into a big mess.  If we aren’t paying attention to those subtle signals that something is not ripe for us, we can put ourselves in situations that are challenging, even unnecessarily toxic or hurtful.

As I reflected on times in my life when I have picked the unripe blueberry, whether to try to make a situation work, or to “heal” someone that didn’t want to be healed, or to be friends with someone that was not a good fit, I realized that these situations were all very like wanting to be loved when love is not in the room.  Then came words to translate the experience so that my mind could integrate what my body already knew.  Go where the love is.

Once again Nature shows me, gently and without pomp or circumstance, how to live life in alignment and balance.  How to move with ease and grace in this world.  Nature as the model, Nature as my ideal, patient way-shower.

Pick the ripe berry, the one that falls easily into your hand.  If there is resistance, pause.  Don’t go further with that until there is a sign of ripening.   Things that are not good for you will be harder to interface with, like the unripe berries will resist being plucked.  If it is harder to pull into your grasp, leave it…. and go to the ripe berry.  Go where the love is. 

The God Triton

As I am working with the Divine Masculine and Great Father archetypes of late, the concept of “Father” and what that means is very “up” for me.  I am healing my own inner masculine, as my model is my internalized biological father, grandfathers, uncles, and other father figures, and they weren’t particularly healthy or nice. 

I’ve really been asking myself what “Father” means.  You know, I just can’t answer that question.  I feel that I’ll know it when I see it, but I can’t say I’ve seen it in totality yet.  Maybe it doesn’t exist. 

I’ve seen glimpses of qualities in people (strangers and folks I know) that I would dearly love to have combined in a father figure, such as fierce protectiveness, providing for family, honor and respect, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual safety, the will and confidence to do positive things in the world, and a wise, learned perspective passed down with discernment and kindness.  But my journey has not materialized that man in my life yet.  So, like my ideal mother, I have been working to manifest him within myself.

What do we do when we don’t have a father?  Statistics say that fatherless children are much more likely to act out in the world, flailing about to find the edge of the acceptable boundaries since they were not taught where the acceptable ones are.  Father, or the masculine representative in the unit of father/mother, is a manifestation of individuation, correct and responsible behavior, how to be a contributing member of the physical world, in contrast to the feminine principle of connectivity, holding space for emotion, nurturing and caretaking. The masculine principle is the polar opposite of the feminine principle, and in an ideal situation both principles are actively working together as partners.  Children who grow up without a healthy, functional father are sometimes the ones incarcerated in prisons, or more frequently failing as a mature, integrated and functional member of society.

Yes, we (hopefully) learn boundaries from our mother, too.  Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot.  Don’t run across the street, it’s dangerous.  It’s safe to cry or be angry because I am holding the space for you to explore these natural human feelings and will guide you to feeling okay again. 

But in the traditional model, the physical boundaries of how to operate in society are shown to us by our fathers, the men of the tribe.  Our father actively shows us by his behavior what appropriate behavior in the functioning whole is.  What if your very body, the only thing you truly claim as your own in this world and the vessel by which you navigate through the maze of larger society, becomes the fertile ground on which inappropriate behavior is taught?  

My journey of 45 years has included 24 years of examination of these and other concepts as I have tried to understand what healthy parenting is.  My own father is a man I have alternately idealized and wanted to kill with my bare hands since his sexual abuse came to my consciousness.  How desperately I have clung to a picture of him as a good man who lost his way, or was victimized by the meanness and craziness of my mother and her family of origin.  How much my inner daughter has wanted to make him the good guy.

I have come to a greater balance, I think, in which I can acknowledge the harmful, toxic behavior patterns with open eyes as well as see the positive things my father gave to me.  It feels like the uncomfortable, correct placeholder in my psyche….to span the spectrum of the goodness and the badness that is my father, and claim it all.

The fact is that he has made choices over the years, just like we all do, and that some of those choices were extraordinarily hurtful.  And that he remains a flawed human being (aren’t we all?)  

But here is what makes the difference.  Despite all of my forgiveness work and my own attempts to heal him by reaching out when I had done enough recovery work to feel I could be in the same room with him safely, to ask him repeatedly to go to therapy, to practice compassion for him as a man who was a boy that was probably abused himself, he does not want to heal himself.  And despite my years of rage work, body reclamation, consciousness-raising, and learning about alcoholic families and the patterns, labels and roles we take on as their children, I cannot save him. 

My father has not chosen to reach into his universal heart for the courage to make things right, with me or within himself.  And it is here in this place of knowing things could be different, loving him from afar, and protecting myself from his illness that I remain standing, fatherless.     

I wrote this piece in 1998 for a ceremonial circle in Asheville NC as a way to honor my father, while also speaking my truth.  I read it to a rapt audience on a quiet Sunday morning, much like this one; many of them wept silently.

6-21-98  Father’s Day

I am going to introduce you to my father.  His name is Tom.  He was born in the Outer Banks village of Hatteras; it pokes about as far out into the ocean as North Carolina can reach.

His tales of his childhood took on a mythological quality which held all within hearing range spellbound.  There was no paved road into Hatteras then; a remote fishing village was the seemingly perfect place for a boy to grow up.  I imagine a freckled faced boy with Carolina blue eyes and big front teeth (like mine), golden salty sunlight in his hair as he ran the beaches, roamed the marshes gathering eels and frogs, rode his obstinate pony to the farthest reaches of the island at will.  The stories about getting lost in the sound at dark in a rowboat, the sharks closing in.  Being scared to walk the bog at night for fear of the dreaded “swampus”, a creature of untold menace and terror.  My father was a boy once.

He spoke of a simple life; the priority was survival against the hurricanes, the sea and the isolation.  He spoke of his mother as the rigid keeper of the household.  “Take those greasy shoes off!  No sand in my house!  Your feet are black as tar!”  He did not speak of his father that I can remember.

He was the local boy who left the flock.  He met my mother one fateful summer night at a village dance.  She was on vacation with her family; they were “city folk”, or “ferners” as grandmom called people who did not have the distinction of being sea worthy.  My parents dated long distance for two years, then eloped when he was 19 years of age, much to the horror of both families.  He dropped out of UNC Chapel Hill.  I was born 10 months later. 

I don’t know exactly what caused him to be “emotionally under”; probably a myriad of things.  My personal experience of him was that there was a soft, vulnerable side that he covered, or surrounded with a rigid moral construct and stoicism.  I have vivid impressions of the set of his jaw when he angered, or his clenched fist held up in front of him to signify that I was not to say another word.  I think a part of me thought he would kill me, although I cannot remember him ever spanking me.  As a teenager warring with my mother, I took any opportunity to bond with him.  This typically took place after he had consumed several beers.  He would talk and I would sit and listen.  I can remember sitting out on the front porch one evening hearing the gruesome details of his sex life with my mother, whom he called “frigid”.  I did not know then that my yearning for father became subsumed in his need for a confidant and mistress.

I confronted my father 8 years ago about the sexual abuse.  I was so afraid that he would respond by saying that I was crazy or that I’d made it all up.  Instead, he did not respond at all.  He has not spoken to me for these 8 years.  I have been many places about this loss; I was so angry for a long time that I didn’t care that we had no relationship.  Other times I have wanted to cave in completely and say that I didn’t mean it, that it’s alright.  It is just in the last year or two that I have considered him as a person, a little boy who grew up into a man who happened to become my father.  I have started to notice the good things that I got from him.  I don’t know where this will lead.  But this feels like a more human place to be.

(Image to come)

I debuted my art show last night, “The Journey of the Masculine through Shadow and Light” at my studio here in Tallahassee.  A part of the installation was a story that I channeled that morning and printed up, placing it underneath the 50 images that comprised this show.  I believe I was guided to make this art and to bring through this story in order to create a book.  However, I want to share The Story with you now. 

“Once upon a time, there was peace. 

The Masculine principle desired to expand its knowing of itself.  It began by making choices; these choices compressed All of Creation, towards the end of the Masculine knowing itself. 

The compressions resulted in the Masculine principle fracturing the world.  Manifestations included the subjugation of nature and the Masculine principle’s partner, the Feminine. 

In coming to know itself, the Masculine revealed the need for balance. 

All of Creation supported, in love, the Masculine’s desire to know itself.  All of Creation was in agreement with the expressions of the out-of-balance world that the Masculine created.  So, when the time came to correct the imbalance, the Feminine stepped in to bring balance. 

The Feminine principle held the space within which the Masculine began to mend the fractures.  The Feminine invoked the powers of balance to assist in the mending.  The return created a stirring in the hearts of humankind, which opened a door to a side of themselves they had forgotten. 

The return of the Feminine created a choice – to continue in the imbalance, or to embrace a new wholeness.  The choice became more and more apparent as the worlds collided; friction, the result of two coming together to become one, was the medium to invoke the choice. 

The friction became so prevalent as to capture All of Creation’s interest.  Spectators and supporters attended the Great Re-Balancing; across the farthest reaches The Story was felt and held.  The love that emanated from All Creation provided an alchemical support which increased the intensity of the friction. 

The increased friction acted like sandpaper, destroying old patterns.  Cleansing and re-ordering became the way of life.  The new wholeness was achieved through the union of the Feminine and the Masculine principles. 

Balance again reigned.”

What was interesting to me was that this channeled story has a happy ending, as if from a larger perspective, all of the pain and suffering that has resulted from the break between the masculine and feminine were just part of the “play”, and that in the end it really is just experience. 

However, the 50 images I was guided to create tell a different story…in graphic detail, I was shown over and over the fracturing and the pain and subjugation mentioned in The Story, yet there was no happy ending in the 50 images.  I was told that the human version of the story is told by the images, and that we’re not at the end yet.

I was so grateful for the considered questions and responses that folks had.   One man whispered quietly to me, “Thank you for not blaming the men for everything.”  It broke my heart, and made me glad I have access to another version of the story.

A flood of work is coming through me, and it seems to be very much in examination of the dynamic between the feminine and the masculine, both within each of us and in the collective whole.  I am beginning to see that part of my soul’s desire on the earth is to bring healing to the masculine through the embodiment of the Sacred Feminine.  I am brought to tears with this knowing. 

all contents copyright Licia Berry, 2010