Part Nineteen

Why The Caged Bird Sings

Joan Lansberry

October 23, 1997

Julia has been inspired to write a concise, but richly packed article called The Philosopher's Stone: Legacy of the Ancient Mother that truly bridges the gap between skepticism and religious belief. It also has helped me to understand my own processes as well.

I own two brass statues of the Goddess, one a representation of the Snake Goddess from the ancient near East, the other of Brigit, the Celtic Goddess. I have enjoyed them very much, as they invite me to think about the Goddess (first cause and ground of our being) while contemplating the goddess (humankind's attempt to conceptualize the Ultimate Mystery). Yet part of me felt uncomfortable, as if it were idolatry. I knew full well the images are only the very ancient people's ideal, a seemingly trivial thing compared to the ineffable essence of the Real Thing. Why are people drawn to these metaphors? Julia's article shines light on this.

What is significant to me is that in two millennia, the very word "religion" has been stripped of the primary meaning of the Latin "religio." An individual re-connects with ancient roots, ancestral voices and tradition. To re-link: that is religion. It is personal; it is heritage and identity.

She continues further:

"Symbols are themselves a kind of linkage as is evident in the word. Words, as we know them are symbols as well, markings or sounds which represent material realities or abstract concepts. They may link together a full constellation of separate meanings: simple, complex, or otherwise unrelated at first glance. Archetypes are enduring symbols, personifications, evolving slowly across the generations, figuratively "alive" in minds through cultural transmission.

Julia continues this exploration of the sense of connection to the past.

A more worthy definition of "mystery" is as a rite of passage or a purification from one's own pollution. Perhaps it can be seen in the Eleusinian sense as a theatrical experience of meaningful symbols in the wake of purification of heart and mind. What is there in the silent reaping of an ear of grain? This celebration satisfies a hunger in the more primitive reaches of my brain, a catering to the longings within the hypothalamus, perhaps, for connection to the mothers of my distant ancestors. The sparkle of their eyes yet shines within the depths of mine and of those to come.

And so it is as I gaze upon those statues, I join with everyone before me who has gazed at similar images and contemplated the deeper meaning beyond the material surface of things. The burn of their yearnings are echoed in me. I will pass the torch on to generations to come, and they will know this flame within their hearts, as deeply as I do. The eternal cycle of things goes on, and I am grateful for the short space of time I inhabit upon that Ring.

October 24, 1997

Helina, returning late last night from her trip to Tulsa, gave Julia many belated birthday presents. One was a book called The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford. I nabbed it, and glanced through it quickly. Just before going to bed, this poem found on a mummy of Soutywes, no. 2611m. c. 1100BC, caught my eye and heart:

O my mother Nut, stretch your wings over me. Let me become like the imperishable stars, like the indefatigable stars. May Nut extend her arms over me and her name of 'She who extends her arms' chases away the shadows and makes the light shine everywhere. O Great Being who is in the world of the Dead, At whose feet is Eternity. In whose hand is the always, Come to me, O great divine beloved Soul, who is in the mysterious abyss, Come to me.

How this poem moves me! I am swept into the arms of the Mystery reading it. What is that Mystery that I am blessed to be able to experience? Can it all be only a wonderful dream-state into which we mortals can go? Are we indeed 'forever children', as claim the skeptics, crying out to the cosmos "I want my Mommy!" ? Can it be that there is, as Julia says in her article, ". . . no tenable evidence for any objective external deity or even for a pantheist etheric presence." ?

Heavy thoughts, these, that have awakened me from my sleep, and so I am here at 3:30am, in a house all quiet, except for the refrigerator hum and people snoring. Heavy thoughts, that my mind, not usually drawn to matters of complex debate, wrestles with. The skeptics claim to shoot down every reasoned claim that theists make. The argument from design, which avows that so marvelous a universe simply can not have evolved into being on its own steam, is targeted and rejected. Do I see cause for this? No, I can't remember what ammo the atheists have or why it is supposed to be effective. Do they claim it is simply in the nature of things to evolve, and there is no "First Cause" needed? What if that were so? What if all our sensations of Divine Presence are only a pleasant illusion, a spell, into which we fall? What if that were so? Perhaps, then, Julia's answer "credo quia consolans, "I believe because it consoles.", is all we are left with. If that were so, it would be sufficient reason enough for all our poems, incantations, and cries to the First Mother.

But is that indeed so? I sense an ethereal connection to that which I cannot see with my physical eyes.. I sense a deeper reality underlaying the material surface of things. I reach out with fingers of faith to touch that deeper reality. I know it is there, in a way as certain to me as when I reach out to Laura or Julia in the night, and feel the tactile quality of the softness of their flesh. I know it! I know it in my heart. It is not from the reason of the mind, however many wonders that has wrought, that I know this. It is with inner vision that I can perceive this. And those eyes see beyond the power of microscopes, beyond the cellular level. I open my heart and I become a vessel. I am filled with this Energy, and I know it is the energy of the First Cause. It is the energy that has moved all Creation. I feel it singing through out me, HER SONG, the chords of which sing me into wholeness. I know this song. The breath of the Singer blows warm upon me. Blows warm upon me, and I am comforted to be within Her arms, enveloped and secure.

If this is a dream, wake me not from it!

October 26, 1997

On a weekend jaunt for change of scenery, heading west on route 8 towards Yuma, I glanced at one of the familiar green mileage signs. The first destination listed caught my eye, "DELETED". "Why did they get rid of the town?", was my first thought. Another glance relieved me. "DATELAND" was still safely intact. I had definitely been spending too much time on the computer, where entire works of creation can be erased with three clicks of the mouse. I really needed the change of scenery!

October 27, 1997

What nightmares I have had last night and this morning! In each dream huge piles of work haunted me, like living cloth monsters. I had to explain in each dream that I can only work for a couple of hours, because any longer causes a bad headache. I guess I'm still recovering.

My recounting of these dreams inspired Julia to some of her nonsense "free association" comments. She talked about sewing codpieces on garments. Who would ever want such a thing? I have, indeed, in my long history in the alterations business had some weird assignments. One job inspired much laughter among my co-workers and I. A muscular "tall, dark and handsome" man came into the shop wanting "break-away" clothes! He was a male stripper and needed me to open the side seams on his brown shorts and put velcro strips there so he could 'magically' rip them off before his amazed audience!

But the most bizarre job I ever had was many years ago, when I was in my early twenties. A formal-length black lace dress came into the shop with a middle-aged woman, who explained what her mother wanted done. Her mother had specific requests for what she wanted to be clothed with while laying in her casket! This black dress was just perfect, except that it had short sleeves. The woman considered it a total indignity to be shown and buried with her arms showing! Because the back of the dress would not be on view, I had to take black lace from the backside and cut extensions for the sleeves to make them long-sleeves!

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WHY AND HOW

Strength in the face of weakness,
I know why the caged bird sings.
I can with grace accept this place.
My spirit is not broken.
Strength in the face of weakness,
I know how the caged bird sings.
Do not discount
the Power of Song.

JAL, 10-27-97

I give my apologies to Maya Angelou. I have not read her "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", but the concept I get from the title alone is rich. How we react to our limitations determines the very quality of life. It is easy to be cheerful when everything is going well. But what do we do in the face of adversity? May we all have the strength to "sing" as loudly as we can, and then know the blessing that very "song" brings.

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Coping with ordinary hardships, such as illness or financial troubles, is one kind of limitation. What about the cases in which the adversity is an unspeakable horror? There is a new exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial called ``No Child's Play.'' It contains the toys and games that those slated for Nazi extermination left behind. I quote from the associated press article by Samar Assad which appeared in Starnet today.

"The exhibit, which opened last week, shows that the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust ``were like our children in many ways,'' curator Yehudit Inbar said. ``The games they were playing also remind us that the Holocaust did not happen so many years ago,'' said Inbar. For example, she said, a young Warsaw Ghetto inmate's paper dolls were fashioned after movie hero Tarzan. In the Nazis' Theresienstadt ghetto, toys were passed from child to child, with those being deported to death camps leaving their precious belongings to those staying behind. This is how Dan Gluss, then a 7-year-old at Theresienstadt, came to own the board game ``Ghetto'' - a Monopoly knock-off made for the ghetto kids by an older artist and now on display at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. The board game, along with a doll dressed in the striped uniform of Auschwitz, a young girl's notebook crammed with recipes she collected to forget about hunger and dozens of other toys and games," are part of this exhibit. "Yad Vashem began collecting the toys and games in April, asking survivors and museums to contribute to the year-long exhibit, which is accompanied by photos describing Jewish life in Europe before and during World War II. Many artifacts came from Theresienstadt, an SS-run ghetto in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia between 1941 and 1945, and a way station for Jews sent to Nazi death camps. In September 1942, some 50,000 Jews were crowded into Theresienstadt and half the inmates died that year from disease. The artists and writers among the inmates organized Theresienstadt's cultural life." I remember that an orchestra was formed at one of these death camps. A movie was made about it that I would like to see someday. Beauty, art and play must always be with us to the very end. " Fourteen-year-old Ian Klein made three puppets for the Theresienstadt puppet theater, with the help of his teacher Walter Freud. Klein and Freud later died in the Auschwitz death camp, but the puppets are on display at Yad Vashem. Dan Gluss, 63, a resident of the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, said he and his family were sent to Theresienstadt in 1941. At the time he was 7 years old, and his brother Micha was 9. Gluss said he and the other boys played soccer with a tightly knotted rag for lack of a real ball. One day, children who were being sent east to the death camps passed on the ``Ghetto'' game to him, he said. The game ``was passed on all the time by children who went to the east and were not able to take it with them,'' he said. ``We stayed in Theresienstadt until the very end and the game stayed with us.'' The center of the board, fashioned after Monopoly, shows a detailed drawing of Theresienstadt with its barracks and alleys. The surrounding stops portray scenes of ghetto life, including the post office, workshops, water tower and cook houses. An older inmate named Pock made the game for the children ``to explain to them the situation they were in,'' said Inbar, the curator. Some 13,000 children were sent to Theresienstadt during World War II and later deported to death camps. Only a few hundred survived. For many children in Nazi camps, toys were their only link to a life the Nazis had forced them to leave behind. In a video shown at the exhibit, survivor Zofia Zajczyk-Rusner describes how as a child she escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto, only to make her rescuer turn back with her to retrieve the doll she had forgotten. Francesca Kwestler-Stern escaped the reality of hunger in Germany's Ravensbrueck concentration camp by writing down recipes she collected from her friends in a brown notebook now being shown by Yad Vashem. At the Auschwitz death camp, Roma Alter was already in her 20s when she made a cloth doll wearing a blue-and-white striped inmate's uniform. A red triangle on the front denotes that the prisoner is political. The yellow strip on top of the triangle signifies Jew, with the letter P on the triangle for Poland. Inbar said the games and toys not only gave the children comfort, but also helped them cling to life. ``They kept their minds out of the world they were in, and channeled the little energy they had toward survival,'' she said." This display shows "the caged bird singing" under the trials of the most heinous evil that the world has ever known. It is a telling tribute to the beauty of the human spirit. That we don't give up in the face of such atrocity and we never give up our strength of will is one of humankind's most noble characteristics.

October 30, 1997

If I were allowed any more than just five albums by the "Desert Island" circumstances, there is another Capercaillie album that would surely be packed into my bundle. Their Secret People album is filled with many moving songs. But the one that speaks loudest to me this morning is Grace and Pride. It captures some of the finest essentials of the human condition.

Grace and Pride . . . There's nothing more that I prefer than to see the boys and the girls stepping out with grace and pride as honesty flows by their side. And nothing matters more to you than to sit and sing a song that's true. . . Manus Lunny

May we all sing a song that's true.