When I told my younger son’s partner that I was sad because Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, she asked who Ginsberg was. I was surprised, but I may have surprised her when she said that she had spent some time in Mexico working with the toad, I asked who the toad was. Apparently, it’s not a ‘who’ but a ‘what’ - a psychoactive substance from a desert toad. Delia has not paid attention to people changing national institutions like the Supreme Court from the inside, the kind of change I dedicated much of my life to. She is more interested in helping people transform a corrupt social order by changing the patterns of their minds, hearts and relationships with people close at hand. I have not paid attention to people working with plants and animals to directly change people’s conditioned patterns. However, we see the importance of what the other is doing and are committed to understanding one another. We dedicate time and space to listen to one another across different personal and generational viewpoints.
My son Ben received the name Azura and has lived in a different world than mine for more than a decade. His father and I have missed him. When his people called him Az, we had to make a mental leap to take in that they were talking about our Ben. We are deeply touched that he has reconnected and that we are able to learn about his world. He and his partner Delia recently moved closer to us to live in a tiny house in the woods and build community with others who, like them, are committed to changing our culture from the inside out. They describe interacting with a wide range of plants and animals including ingesting various natural psychoactive substances as entering relationships from which they learn from the plants and animals. I nursed Ben for months while reading a series of books about a Mexican Shaman by Carlos Castaneda that were marketed as anthropology and criticized as fantasy fiction. As mature adults, his community lives by many of those teachings for real. Ben/Azura is like his father in that he can make or fix just about anything and is enjoying working as a carpenter. Delia is also an artist of the practical – a terrific cook and hairdresser. They see that work as part of their larger work, which includes learning who they are from the inside out and building healing, less oppressive relationships with other beings including the earth. I understand. That has been the real work of my life as well. We have just approached that work from different points of view. There may be no better learning than entering deeply into a different point of view.
Ben/Azura says “One of the many great transformations we are going through right now is the ‘Death of the Guru’”. When he was 9, I read The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, which defined our society as structured to support authoritarian power. They used an analysis of some contemporary gurus to show how authoritarian power works at its most basic level by teaching people to distrust themselves even at the cost of being abused, then show how that process is writ large by vast political and religious structures. Their work gave me another way to think about the work of neo-pagan feminist witch Starhawk, whose rituals had influenced my religious practice since before he was born. When Ben was 3, she published Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery that helped me understand better how ritual and ceremony were breaking down the culturally conditioned authoritarian patterns of power by repatterning the cells of my mind, heart and fingertips down to my very soul. In that way I learned to trust my own experiences of both spiritual and institutional life. These books and practices helped empower me to work with others attempting to build non-authoritarian structures where people could empower themselves, share power and authorize each other to do the tasks that best suited them to meet shared goals.
Ben and Delia also create and practice ritual and ceremony to help empower themselves and others. Recently, Delia gave me a ritual as a gift, based on the experience we had as she ceremonially cut my hair. It has many of the elements of empowering rituals I have participated in over the decades. She gave a structure while inviting my involvement and creativity with words, art, and movement. I have been working with this ritual for 3 days and it has helped me feel more vulnerable and empowered as I align with seasonal change. Delia has a website which I share with you – devotionaldeepbeauty.com She and I agree that cross generational dialogue can help change some of the patterns of our minds, hearts, and souls.
Who are you in dialogue with across generations? In what ways do you look at the world differently? What have you learned about them? What surprises you? What have you learned about yourself from them? Do you share any experiences or values? How is the world around you changing? How does it stay the same?