I'm loving this book by Judi, one of our own Gaiasters.  I met Judi in Oregon this summer, and I'm SO GLAD that I did, and that I found out about this book.  I decided to write this review for her Amazon page (I hope I did a good job!).  The picture above is of my own copy.  (Judi's daughter, Heather, did the cover art!)  I really can't say enough about it.  It's Really, Really good.  Judi is a Very talented writer.  I hope you all will take a look!

This book is a spiritual offering of feminist consciousness.  Judith Ivy is a gifted writer who surprises and enchants the reader again and again with intelligence and creativity.  I'm so glad I read this book.  It feeds my heart and soul. 

The heroine, an emotionally overwhelmed fifty-year-old social worker striving to make a  positive difference in the suffering of people in contemporary society, is moved by great longing within a deeply meditative state to find the true home of her spirit in a civilization of 4,000 years ago based upon precepts of equality, harmony, and balance with all nature.  In this way the author invites us to sense our own potential for living in harmony with the natural world and creating compassionate communities of dynamic balance and peace. 

As a truly feminist masterpiece, while this story moves surely forward disclosing events in a linear fashion, it also moves in circular --even spiral patterns as the heroine travels through time and learns by remembering, even as her selves evolve as young girl, mother and crone.  Eventually, the heroine finds that she, and humankind, has always faced--even as she does now as a social worker--self-serving violence used as  justification for societies based on fear and domination.

A few passages from the book struck me with their beauty, and I'll quote a little here:

"It is through the retelling of our past at each circle of the moon...that we weave ourselves into the energy force of the web of life.  Each time the story is told we mend the broken places of the web, strengthen the bonds, and are reminded of our connection to the whole, the oneness of life."

"...it takes a community to maintain a community."

Reading this book can be a much deeper experience than enjoying the good read. 
This story helps us to be aware of the implicit order of things - the values we hold most dear, and to feel our own capacity to create culture (shared meaning) by living as we want most to live.

Hey there!  OK, it's UP, and of course already getting a little outdated.  The positive side is, there's always more to add.   So, if you want to, you can visit my website. 


Not sure the social networking stuff is ready to use yet.  It's a work in progress, but it's now a little bit done, so we can share it.      

It navigates via the buttons across the top, or the "pages" directory on the right side.

Thanks, and have fun! 

Nothing like that.  But one time my cousin showed me a letter that my aunt (not her mother, but another aunt--an older sister of my mother's) wrote to my uncle (my cousin's father).  She thought I "would be interested."  The letter changed my life, and I am deeply grateful for seeing it.

The letter was about my mother.  It explained that there was something wrong with her, really, in that she seemed not to know love or to understand what it is.  She was saying that the concept of God's love is a simple thing, and a beautiful thing, and to live a life without an understanding of that can be a terrible thing.  It wasn't a letter about religion.  She was referring to "love" in the sense of compassion, affection, tenderness, deep cherishing that can be counted on in any situation, as it is a spiritual reality that a person can draw upon or bring into one's life.  She explained that my mother had a deeply dependent relationship to my father, but other than that, built few bridges to the world.  It cited several examples of the woman they knew as my mother's behavior that seemed odd to people at the time.  People were actually talking about hospitalization, although no one seriously followed up on that.  This was all from a few years before I was born.  But it rang so deeply true to me that it released me from a kind of prison that I was in before I read the letter.  I had dispared about her for my entire life, more or less, and here was my aunt with an insightful diagnosis. 

My cousin seemed to enjoy a sense of superiority as she shared the letter with me.  She, you see, had access to these resources, "secret" information like this and, in the kindness of her heart, had made the reach-down to share them with me, who knew nothing.  That is another prison for me.

My family is like Chinese boxes.  In the center of the boxes is a heart of love, or maybe a heart of blood.  We never know which it is.  It's like a treasure.  A treasure of pain.  But also I am SO grateful to my cousin, even if she still thinks she's better put together than I am, because I know my aunt was correct, and it explained so much. 

The other thing to know is that my mother grew up in an emotionally closed and hypercompetitive family, and her life was in jeopardy from physical abuse--not all the time, but when things got bad.  She lived a life of privilege in some respects, and a pitiable life in other respects.  I now see her as a beautiful, and very fragile, a lovely being, like a butterfly that you can hold in your hand gently, but you don't know whether it will live or die.  She did die alone.  I couldn't be with her, because I didn't have the money to stay in town with her indefinitely--they knew she was facing death, but nobody could say when.  But I could not ask a single relative in town to stay with them.  That would not be acceptable.  And so I went back home to Arizona.  That was one of the saddest days of my life.  I didn't know how to be with her.  I just didn't know how.

One thing I've learned about healing is that it's really true that when you heal yourself, you heal the planet and others as well.  When I stop hurting, then I am freed up to do something more positive, and that lighter energy comes through and affects others through my new attitudes, approaches, and intentions.  If I live on a more whole and loving level, it helps everyone around, and my impact on community and the natural environment is improved, so that others and everything around me can also benefit from not receiving the shit I don't kick, and conversely, receiving support from my more positive and aware approaches. 

This picture says a lot more than I just said, and more articulately as well.  The painter is Daniel Minter.  The painting is entitled "Healing Weight."

Our son, Max, was just this age--about four going on five, and he was enjoying a Guppy swim class offered by the YMCA at our local pool.  Our whole family was there to cheer him on--that is, his dad, his big sister, and me.  And we were all watching, when Max reached over and pulled down his (quite attractive) swim instructor's bathing suit top, in a sudden forceful downward motion that caused her breats to launch upward like leaping seals.  Everyone was surprised, and the swim instructor was irritated.  She stuffed them back in, pronto.  Max was asked to leave the pool.  We were laughing.  "He didn't mean it!  He didn't mean it!"  "I know," replied the instructor (not pissed, but not laughing either).  "I just need him to be out of here for a little while."  Max was mystified.  Such a big reaction from the action of such a small impulse.  And of course, we never let him forget about it.  "Why DID you do that, anyway?"  "I dunno." 

Just when I'm feeling sorry for myself and totally stressed out and having fantasies of graphic self immolation (not necessarily by fire, but still scary stuff) and on and on...  you know, I can get on my OWN nerves as effectively as anyone else can.  Do-it-yourself annoyance.

Anyway.  Just when it's all dust, crumbs and dead bugs, along comes SOMETHING GROOVY to raise my spirits and make we wanna shout, "HOSANNA!!!"  (That would be a great name for a MTF transgendered person!) 

See how tasteless I am?  And THAT raises my spirits!  I wonder why?  You'd think, "Oh!  Get that girl some classical music and some mushroom quiche!"  NOT!!!  Just get me a beer and tell me I really don't have to...  do whatever.  Of course I'll do it, but not tonight. 

TONIGHT I CELEBRATE!!!!   Why?  Because tomorrow is September 19th, which is Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!!!  YAY!!!!!!   Thank you to Happiness for this WONDERFUL INFORMATON!!!!

Thank you Gaia!  I hope that sometimes my stuff brings smiles to you guys, like you guys bring smiles to me! 

OK, that cat's out of the bag, now!  Carla and I spent Friday, Sept. 12th together at the ASEP Conference (see Carla's blog about ASEP).  It was a really good conference.  I was waiting to see whether Carla would post this picture, as it's from her camera and she sent me a copy.  Oh Lord, I'm in a hurry now, too.  What a world.  Oh well.  Anyway, here it is.  We are so blessed to be able to know and meet each other.  Just look at our faces, if you want to know what our day was like!  :)  I was going to crop the silly name tags, but decided to leave them, because they're funny!  Carla is on her way to meet J.W. now, and I sure wish I was going, too!  And then she's going to see Aley and Keith!  What a trip! 

I think the best way to celebrate peace is to be peaceful.  In what ways can we show that we value peacefulness and enjoy doing so?  My suggestion is to notice when people do things in a peaceful way-- like when they listen, when they think before acting, when they explore rather than judge.  And to let them know that you appreciate their contributions to peace.  And to give them what you would like to receive from them. 

I looked down at the floor in the bathroom tonight, and there was a cute little brown cricket, sorta like the one up there, but the one I saw was a male.  The one up there is a female.  You can tell because she has that egg-planter-thing coming out of her butt, and when her eggs mature (she's a little young yet for that, and her egg-planter is only about 2/3 as long as it will be), she'll pump them out through that thing and they will be carefully placed into the ground. 

Crickets are a special love for me because I used to fear them.  Like, panicked irrational fear. 

The first thing that happened that helped me start to overcome the fear was something that occurred as a blessing without any intention on my part.  Specifically, at one time I worked with a wonderful woman named Birgit.  She had beautiful hazel eyes and her special gift was a sophisticated, goofy, random sense of humor that could get me laughing so hard I was doubled over and couldn't breath!  Boy, do I miss her!  (She moved to North Carolina.) 

Birgit and I both came from someplace else to live in Arizona, and both of us noticed that there are a great number of crickets here.  If you don't happen to like them (which neither of us did) it could be really gross to go outside anyplace in the evening, because they'd be all over by the doormat and anywhere on the front porch.  So how to come home in the evening without risking an attack of crickets just before you walk in the front door?  

One day Birigit said, "There's so many great things about Arizona!  Where else are the bugs so happy to see you that they get a party together and wait by the doormat for you to come home?  You know, I could never be truly lonely here, never feel unwanted, because those darn little suckers have a party for me every night.  They're so loyal!"

And that was  true!  There really IS something good about the little critters.  Weirdly.  Creepily.  And so we laughed and thought about the odd little compensations that life can offer if you look at them that way...

The next thing that happened was that I got to know the crickets personally.  My son, Max, went through a frog stage, where he had a frog in a terrarium and we fed it crickets that we BOUGHT at the pet store.  Well, seeing them in that role--as food rather than as party goers, I actually started to feel sorry for the little guys.  And I started to read about them--to study up.  And it was so interesting that Max started getting interested in them, too.  And we ended up learning more about the crickets than we did the frog.  And when the frog died one day, we just kept right on raising the crickets for quite awhile, until Mike decided that the terrarium full of crickets was a health risk.  BTW, did you know crickets will eat almost anything?

So, Max and I reverently took the terrarium out to the back alley (unpaved) and turned it upside down so that the whole nest of crickets were freed to go their own little ways and find someone's doorstep to party on.

"What did you do with the crickets?"

"We took them out to the back alley and dumped them out."

"You did WHAT?????"

"We just dumped them in the back alley."

"Alive?"

"Yeah."

"That was stupid!  Now you've contributed to the neighborhood pest problem!  Our neighbors will really appreciate that you've now bumped up the cricket population substantially.  Those insects are destructive, you know!  What were you thinking?"

"I donno.  I like crickets."

And so it was that I realized that I liked crickets.  That was several years ago.  Tonight, as I looked down at the little cutie on the floor, probably a mega-grand descendant of one of the "dumped" crickets from the alley, I asked myself what it was exactly that used to be happening to me when exactly that same sight would fill me with panic and loathing.

If fear is the opposite of love, in this case I would characterize "fear" as "unacceptance."  It is (and I'm only talking about this case, because I don't think all fears are the same) like an emptiness where I'm not willing to be present, a pulling away.  For some reason I still don't accept cockroaches, but crickets are my little hero insects.  I suppose it would be great if Birgit would come back and start telling cockroach jokes.  Laughter can start healing just about anywhere and any time.