HECATE'S DAUGHTER: LISTENING FOR THE CRIES OF THE WORLD

This is from an old 2018 blog post, never more relevant than today.

Hecate, goddess of thresholds, mystery, magic, and the moon, via Jean Bakula, www.jeanbakula@exemplore.com

Silence. 

Beautiful, deep, alive silence.

Outside, rattle and roar of wind against windows. Inside, the quiet of a hundred people sitting in meditation, inhaling, exhaling the peace of this space. Dozens of small story fires radiate through candle flames. A carved wooden statue of Avalokitashvara, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, stands on the altar, as loose and graceful as an unfurling wave. 

It's New Year's Eve. Twenty blocks north is Times Square, with its screaming millions. Here, a different plane, one that I've been craving. I have chosen to welcome my new year at the annual New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care sit with other like-minded, softhearted New Yorkers trying to get through these noisy and scary times with equanimity. 

Why here? I am attracted to ZenCare's mission of offering solace and companionship to suffering people, including those at the end of their lives. During their dharma talks this evening, the two guiding teachers, Robert Chodo Cambell and Koshin Paley Ellison, invite us to lay aside resolutions, which we'd be sure to fall away from by mid-January. Instead, they ask us to consider a quality we want to embody and nourish in our world in 2018. They suggest that embodying is an expression of giving birth, bringing a gift from within ourselves, is a Divine Feminine way of stepping into the new year rather than the conventional patriarchal notion of reaching out or making something happen in the material world.

I exhale. This is an easy one for me. 

Listening. It is what I do, have always done, since I was a pesky little girl tugging on my father’s pants leg: “Tell me a story, Daddy.” I have been saying virtually the same thing – tell me a story – ever since, as a comparative literature student, a reporter, and since 1994, a healing story counselor. “Tell me your story.”  

Given this luscious time to remember and visualize listening, I know with certainty that in 2018,  I want to be able to listen more deeply to the stories life is telling through clients, the places I walk through, environments in which I live, friends, family memories, new adventures, and through through my pen on the page. To listen more deeply to whatever is calling to be born in that moment. 

What quality are you embodying this year? Can you give it a visual metaphor?

Mine is Hecate, goddess of thresholds, magic, mystery, and the moon, the one who lives at a crossroads outside of town, listening for the cries of lost souls.

When I first started my Living Story practice in the world's most lost and forgotten places,, I read a lot about myth and fairy tale, because ordinary language was inadequate to contain and express that experience. Two goddesses especially resonated with me, both of them transformational: Aphrodite and Hecate. Transformation through love, and transformation through deep listening and intuition. Lighthearted listening through delight, love, and playfulness, and deep listening to the call of the world's suffering.

Through the years, as I have listened to more stories, and especially in the last year, as I have faced personal challenges and my country has slid into a sorrowful place, Hecate is the spirit and the energy that most guides my practice. A mature female goddess whose wisdom comes from lived experience, Hecate is the goddess who hears the cries of lost souls and guides them home. 

I found the image at the top of this post on google and followed it to the website that houses writer-astrologer Jean Bakula’s blog, jeanbakula@exemplore.com. Briefly, Bakula notes that Hecate’s three-headed dog represents her ability to see past, present, and future. In my practice, Hecate’s way of knowing comes through story, which creates coherence between the present moment, the past that has led us to this place, and the future possibilities latent in any situation. From my own reading, The serpent head at the top of her staff represents higher consciousness, and broomsticks represent the sweeping away of threshold hindrances. 

Most important to me about the energy of Hecate is that she brings the quality of listening to the world. It was Hecate who could not see but who heard Persephone’s cries from the underworld to which she had been abducted by Hades. It was Hecate who called upon an army of other gods to rescue the buried child, and it was Hecate who remained Persephone’s companion throughout her life, even when she returned every six months to take up her role as Queen of the Underworld, guiding those who had fallen there back to the light. 

I want to manifest Hecate's energy ever more fully this year. 

The evening concludes with the ringing of a bell 108 times for the 108 gates of liberation and the 108 hindrances, which in Buddhist tradition are the same. Reverberating with the deep clear tones of the bell and my personal intention, I walk out into the night both grounded and lifted. Struggling against the frigid winds to the subway, past other stragglers going to their midnight destinations, filled with new energy, knowing that my path this year is about bringing forth more deeply the quality of listening – for the story beneath the story, the story that wants to emerge – in my life, yours, my world, yours, ours. 

Are you listening to the story your life is telling you?

In every moment we’re at a crossroads: past and future are right here with us in the present. We’re always being asked to let go of the past by telling its story, and to choose a direction forward. The fact is that we’re given difficult situations to help us grow — not to overcome  problems, but to ripen and blossom through them; to look and listen more deeply into ourselves and our experience; to discover strengths, gifts, and a degree of commitment to life that demands more than we knew we possessed. 

Your personal world and its mood. The environments in which we find ourselves or choose to live often mirror our internal landscape. What does your world look and feel like? What features stand out for you? In my own recent life, I’ve lived in a series of rooms that aren’t my home. They reflect the major life transition I’ve been traveling through since my mother’s death five years ago. When I understand my experience this way, I feel not homeless and anxious, but calm and focused on listening for what is trying to come forth and what is being asked of me now.

Your supporting cast. Who's with you and who matters? I’m sure you’ve heard it said that everyone we meet is a teacher. This is true. The characters who populate our lives affirm and lift us, or denigrate and deplete us. Remembering that all the world’s a stage, and that the people whom we meet outside are often reflections of characters in ourselves, who uplifts and energizes you? Who sabotages you? Understand that we are all made up of light and shadow energy; your hero and your "villain" can be the same person. I have met both companions and adversaries during my life, and I am careful now, as I grow older and want my time to be spent more meaningfully, to identify and travel with the light-bearers who energize and inspire me.

What perplexing situations or yearnings are calling for your attention now? 
What are they asking of you?   
What do you need?

------

NEXT FREE ONLINE STORY FACILITATION TRAINING FOR CHANGE-MAKERS:
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9
8-9:30 PM EASTERN
(FEATURING A TRUE HOLIDAY-THEMED TALE
REGISTER AT julietbrucephd@gmail.com

All rights reserved, 2019, Juliet Bruce, PhD 

"PICKING UP THE PIECES OF A BROKEN HEART"

http://www.fionareilly.co.uk/articles/the-incredible-value-of-women-gathering-in-circle

At a time in my life when I had lost my moorings, I offered a writing group to homeless women fresh from the streets in a church-run shelter. Most of the women who attended this program were coping with addiction and mental illness, as well as the effects of chronic domestic violence. It was not unusual to have women sleeping on couches and the floor and coming off crack during our sessions. The women had named the group, “Home is Where the Heart Is.”

A woman named Jackee arrived one day, only to sit silently staring out the barred basement windows at the sidewalk and legs of passersby. Thick tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

Although it was early in my healing story career, by this time, I was gathering tales that resonated and that I could authentically share with others. On this day, I told my rendering of the  Iroquois creation tale, “SkyWoman and the Creation of Earth.” 
In this tale, a young wife had been pushed off the cloud of the Sky People by her jealous husband who believed she had become pregnant from another man’s breath. Far below, the winged and water creatures gathered in a circle to save her from a terrible end in the vast sea below. She was gently laid on the shell of Great Snapping Turtle, and she awoke to find herself protected by a community of creatures who wanted only to help her. On taking a small step, she saw the turtle’s shell expand. Another step, another expansion, until walking around the turtle’s shell, she created a whole new land, an actual continent, which you may know as North America, but that the People call by its true name, Turtle Island.

"In the Story Zone, there is never an end to hope" I ended. "There are always helpers. Just be open to them." Most of the women nodded. 

“Stupid,” said a voice.

“Shut up,” said another. “It’s a metaphor, that what you call it – metaphor?”

“Yeah, it means fuck you in Greek.”

But some of the women took me up on my invitation to write whatever came to mind.

I invited Jackee to write. “I can’t,” she said. She felt too bad about herself to do anything. A crack addict, she has lost her parental rights and her kids had been moved to foster care. She was not allowed to see them.

After a few minutes, Jackee asked for a piece of paper and pen. She wrote and then ripped the paper into pieces. “What a piece of shit!” she cried.

“If it’s how you feel, it’s good,” said one of the other women, looking up from her page. “Just keep writing.”

Meanwhile, I kneeled down and gently gathered the torn pieces and handed them to Jackee to hold. 

At the end of the writing period, when everyone had read their work, they gave me their poems to type up for our newsletter. Jackee held on to her fragments. But the group cajoled her into letting someone read all the crumpled pieces. Piece by piece, Jackee read:

Round and round I go

Lost in a maze

Trying to find my way out

Crying and crying

I want to stop

No more tears in my heart

Window, look out

See my life

Go by so fast

Time goes by so fast

Give myself time to heal

One day at a time.

            “If I were going to give it a name,” I said, “I’d call it ‘Picking Up the Pieces of a Broken Heart.’” I said I heard a shift from the despair of the first line to the medicine of the last.

            “Yeah, maybe,” she said.

            The following week, Jackee appeared on time and sat quietly off to the side, carefully writing and rewriting on a legal pad. Halfway through, she asked if she could read something.

            It was a short poem thanking everyone for their support and read another poem:

            When night falls

            I look at stars.

            I feel hope

            Facing a new day.

            Every day I try to say a kind word

            To someone.

            “Hold on. Don’t give up on yourself.

            Remember, one day at a time

            God loves us all.”

            The group burst into applause

“That’s beautiful, Jackee.”

“Write one for me,” said another.

Thus began Jackee’s new life as the poetry lady who created birthday cards for the other women to give to their family members.

Little things revealed her changing sense of herself. For example, she still sat in the same chair but she moved it into the center of the circle. She began to wear lipstick and to carry a small mirror, which she consulted frequently. This role became the foundation for a new life. Jackee had wanted to be a child minder, but her history made that impossible. Under the monitoring of the homeless center, she was able to fill this role.

Jackee has her good weeks and her bad weeks. For addicts like her, staying off crack is like trying to climb bare-handed out of an icy pit. What it ultimately comes down to is a persona’s ability to make healthy choices. Only Jackee has the power to change her life.

But the poems and stories are footholds. They bear witness to her struggle and her progress. “You got this far,” they say. “Keep climbing.”

It was becoming clear to me that my true ground lay within this healing story process. Whatever was meant to happen with my marriage, however I was supposed to make a tolerable living as a writer, it would come through this work. I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew it would be through this process. I had come to center. I at least had found something I could do with my whole heart.