Demonizing is always a lie, an untruth.
~Father Greg Boyle
...I have come into this world to see this:the sword drop from men's handseven at the height oftheir arc ofragebecause we have finally realizedthere is just one fleshwe can wound.
~Hafiz
Good, I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
~Emperor Palpatine,Star Wars Episode VI
...tenderness is the thing that moves love, so that it connects people. Love can just stay in the head or it can just stay in the heart, but tenderness moves it out into the world. And that’s exactly what gang members long for. But surprise, surprise, it’s what we all long for, is to be in kinship with each other, where we all feel like we belong to each other.
~Father Greg Boyle
What if embracing the shadow just does not feel or seem possible? How exactly do we forgive the unforgivable? How do we go about opening our hearts and Taming the Dragons?
What if the dragon in front of us is so scary and so long despised, culturally and socially, that all we can do is freeze, quaking in fear, or rise with our huge warrior spirit & every weapon in our arsenal to defeat and kill? Will we kill or be killed and how will that stop the cycle of fear and pain, revenge, violence and war?
What if, instead of embracing, we start by just standing still (or simple sitting on the land, in prayer and protection, like the people at Standing Rock), looking at and into the other and letting them look at and into us, with love? What if we then, just tenderly reach out a hand to make contact (like the grandmothers being arrested by the apologetic, and very respectful, police officers who feel forced to arrest them by their own sense of “duty”).
In How to Train Your Dragon (linked), this is exactly what Hiccup does after he comes upon one of the most feared and deadliest of dragons, which he just happened to wound the night before with a catapult. When asked, later why he hadn’t killed the dragon, he answered that he could not, because the dragon had looked just like he felt. Instead, Hiccup befriended this dragon, and invented a way to remedy the wound he’d given him, this remedy actually allowed Toothless to fly again, with Hiccup riding him, and adjusting the mechanism when needed. They created a way to work together.
Hiccup had grown up in a village that hated dragons, fought them bitterly and had entire books devoted to describing their dangers and and how to kill them. The dragons terrorized the village and took their sheep, burning and plundering and the vikings living there did everything they could to stop them. Hiccup was the chief's son, and yet he saw the world differently. He wanted to invent rather than eradicate, to understand rather than to overtake, to come to terms rather than come to blows. The vikings, his own family and village, didn’t know what to do with him.
When I was a Waldorf teacher, at the end of each September we celebrated Michaelmas with the third grade play of Michael and the Dragon. The songs and plays were powerful and all about defeating the dragon...and yet something seemed amiss.
In the old paradigm, evil had to be conquered. St Michael fought the dragon and killed it or at the very least battled it and won. In the new paradigm I like to believe we are coming to terms with the dragon in order to respect and honor that which we have forgotten was wise and sacred about the world and our own bodies.
It was when one teacher wrote a play in which, rather than being defeated or killed, the dragon was actually tamed with a firm hand guided by love, tenderness and connection, and as a result became an agent of support and healing, an assistant to Archangel Michael and for us human beings, that things began to make more sense to me. (In Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy (linked), Dragons are wise and powerful beings, not to be trifled with.)
At Standing Rock, there is a stand off between the Dragon of Greed and the Dragon of Judgement. The people gathered and praying there, defending the water have been demonized by certain media propaganda, portrayed as violent, and yet their intention and actions are to pray and love the land and refuse to be moved for a pipeline that will poison the water. And it's the first time in a very long time that the all of the Native American tribes have come together to pray and make a stand together, they have dropped their own issues and simply come together in love for something more important.
And the “other side” is being demonized as the protectors of greed and violence, wearing riot gear, pushing the praying people back because they’ve been told they are dangerous. These people are doing their duty, their jobs, and I believe they think they are doing good for the world, yet they actually do not understand what we are & have been doing to the earth, they aren’t quite there yet. Perhaps this is the time of their awakening? As they come together, human to human, with the protectors of the waters and the land, they are facing each other, seeing and receiving each other. And all are being re-minded that we are all in this together. Those who are able to stand in love are being met with love. Everyone’s hearts are being opened.
True revolution is possible when those who are sent to to keep down the rabble rousers, actually refuse to hurt them, and in fact turn round to join them in the defense of love and humanity (and in this case, water & the earth herself), in tenderness. That is my vision and my prayer for the Standing Rock Love & Prayer festival. And I envision myself, standing between & with them, all of them, as they stop vilifying each other and come together in that love. As they touch each other’s tender humanity. This is when the battle is over.
It’s about standing with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop.
~Father Greg Boyle
So, What is Evil? Who is the Devil? When we look at the Elections, I know several people that are so angry at and afraid of Donald Trump, they lose their cool. In many of my circles he is vilified and demonized. And is he really evil? I don’t think so. And, even so, his entire platform seems to be based upon vilifying others, using hatred for the “other” to garner support.
Once it became obvious that Donald Trump was actually the Republican candidate for President, a lovely friend of mine was so distressed that she began looking at Canada as a viable emigration option. And then she realized what she was doing. So, instead of running away, she created a “Heal The Donald” Facebook page where we could send prayers and loving thoughts. The idea being that in order to shift her own fear, and that of so many others, she wanted to heal the hatred on the world and Donald Trump was the perfect place to start!
According to Father Greg Boyle, there are no evil people, only very damaged ones:
...not all choices are created equal. And wow, welcome to how complex human beings are. I just think, the reason I haven’t killed human beings is not because my moral compass is intact, though I think it is. It’s because I’ve never been stuck in a despair so bleak or damaged and traumatized, nor suffered mental illness. That’s why I’ve never been a defendant in a capital case. That’s why.
...You know, I’ve seen monstrous things. But I’ll tell you, I’ve been with gang members for 30 years, and I’ve never met a monster. I’ve never met an evil person ever. I’ve seen some pretty horrible things that human beings have done to others. And I know lots of people who’ve killed others. But I’ve never met an evil person or a monstrous one.
~Father Greg Boyle
Rudolf Steiner, who brought forth Waldorf Education and Biodynamic gardening, had a fascinating definition of evil. In his spiritual philosophy he speaks of two faces of evil, (Lucifer & Ahriman)
There is the Luciferic, which most of us are familiar with; the fallen angel who got too big for his britches, believed he was so above everyone and everything else that he didn’t need God, and hence fell to the ground. And on the other hand is the Ahrimanic, that aspect of the human who believes itself to be so lowly, so worthless that we could not even think to touch the dirt under the belly of the lowest worm, much less the hem of God’s frock…
And the balancing point between these two faces of evil is the human being, anchoring the Luciferic highs in one hand while raising up the Ahrimanic lows with the other, and using love, and the heart to keep the two in balance. It is LOVE that tames the evil of the world.
This was such a powerful metaphor for Rudolf Steiner that he created a wood carving called “The Representative of Humanity” (linked) that portrays the human being as representative of Heart/Love as the balance point.
It has been my experience that no loving, healthy, happy, well oriented human being has the need to make him or herself superior to others, or to belittle or hurt others. This is the work of the wounded, damaged or unbalanced human being who has been wronged by life, by others and especially by those who should have been the ones to love and support. And yet those, who did the damage were so damaged themselves….where does this cycle stop?
I went to see Father Greg Boyle (linked to TEDx Talk), of Homeboy Industries, speak at UCSB on October 19. The first thing that caught my attention and held it rapt throughout his entire offering that evening was this:
“Demonizing is always a lie, an untruth. There are no exceptions.”
(For more information on Father Boyle and Homeboy Industries which “... focuses on providing clients (violent offenders, gang members and ex convicts) with services for mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence support, and relationship therapies…”, please see this wonderful Huffington Post article: “Nothing Stops A Bullet Like A Job” from the Huffington Post (linked) referenced in this article many times.)
He has long made it his place in the world to stand in the margins, to literally
...stand with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.
~Father Greg Boyle
According to father Boyle, the three dragons that he tames with his Homeboy Industries are basically created by:
“...a lethal absence of hope in young people. Violence becomes a language, the language of the despondent [hopeless], of the traumatized [damaged], of the mentally ill...All that is on a continuum of severity, some people more despondent than traumatized and some more mentally ill than despondent...they’re either all three or one of the three.”
And he reached these people by spending time, working and living in the margins, at the very edges with them, and seeing in them the tenderness of the human spirit. Once he opened himself to receive them and they began to feel valued and seen and to show their own tender beings. He started out thinking he was helping, saving, and ultimately he was saved. He connected to his own brokenness, and was returned to himself.
In this work (like the teacher understanding how much s/he is learning from the students) it is in allowing oneself to be touched by the humanity and love and in valuing that which society has thrown away, that one is actually finds that value in the rejected places of oneself. “You Can’t Rush Your Healing” ~Trevor Hall
Because in the end, what’s empowering is that they will feel valuable because you value them...the task is listening to them, receiving them. If you’re a proud owner of a pulse, then you can do that. Anybody can do that.
~Father Greg Boyle
He literally “Stand[s] in AWE of what others have to carry not in judgement of how they carry it.”
Sometimes we just have to go through what we go through and bring our best selves to the most difficult challenges in our lives, regardless of who we have been in the past. What if it were the showing up that counted, not the winning or the success? What if the winning comes when we surrender to the LOVE we have the capacity to bring to every situation. The more difficult the situation, the more love, for self and others, is called for. Especially when it seems like that last thing we have the capacity to give.
...the real deal, the real work is finding healing. Find that transformation. Transform your pain, so you don’t have to transmit it anymore...
...coming to terms with the things that had happened to them and the things that they had done. Their wounds become their friends rather than things to numb with drugs or flee from into violence.
...if we’re hospitable to our own brokenness, then we don’t despise it in other people...You’re not hospitable to your own brokenness...so you’re going to just despise it in the other. You’re going to scapegoat…
~Father Greg Boyle
According to Father Boyle. The answer is love in action, which is tenderness:
If love is the answer, community is the context, and tenderness is the methodology. Tenderness is the connective tissue.
~Father Greg Boyle
And we have the capacity for tenderness, we utilize it first by loving and accepting, tender, with ourselves, honoring our own wounds. In doing this we are actually able to actively “dismantle shame & disgrace.” After all,
Everyone is a whole lot more than the worst thing they’ve ever done
~Sister Helen Prejean
In this latest offering from Matt Kahn, Anchoring the Divine Feminine, (linked) Matt reiterated the idea I’ve heard (and mentioned) before, what if our presence, just being here was enough, and if that’s not profound enough, he then says something akin to: we are here to Love more fiercely, more powerfully, more ferociously, than darkness can hate, and the more we love in the face of hatred, the more we actively bring in and down into our present moment, the new paradigm. And he joked about replacing curse words with blessings.
Like a great starving beast My body is quivering Fixed On the scent Of Light.
~Hafiz
YES!!!! I will do that. BLESS YOU! And your mother too, and Bless all you Blessing MotherBlessers!
And Father Boyle (along with Hiccup & Toothless the Dragon, and Luke & Anakin Skywalker in the scene from Return of the Jedi below) has given us a WAY to do this in the real world, TENDERNESS!!!!!!!
The power of tenderness/the RELATIONSHIP is the most powerful thing that is.
~Father Greg Boyle
Darth Vader’s Redemption
This is the true gift of the Devil card: it asks us to look deep inside ourselves, transform our own wounds, our shame and our disgrace with tenderness and then offer that tenderness to those we have judged or demonized, marginalized or thrown away. The Devil asks us to love and redeem ourselves so that we can reach out and offer love to the world. And so I ask, yet again, what if our hearts were so big and so badass, that we are able encompass any and all hatred with love, swallow it whole and the end product is Rainbows?
Please come by and see what Devil is in your cards, and we’ll offer tenderness & blessings together! This month I’ll be here on Saturday, November 5th and my usual 4th Friday, this month on November 25 (Black Friday!!! come by to offer up love and tenderness to any Thanksgiving Dragons that have come your way!)
...I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands aswe pass through this miraculous existence we share on the wayto even a greater being of soul,a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at playwith Him.
I have come into this world to hear this:every song the earth has sung since it was conceived inthe Divine's womb and began spinning from
His wish,every song by wing and fin and hoof,every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,every song of stream and rock,every song of tool and lyre and flute,every song of gold and emeraldand fire,every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignityto know itself asGod:for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching -only imbibing the glorious Sunwill complete us.
I have come into this world to experience this:men so true to lovethey would rather die before speakingan unkindword,men so true their lives are His covenant -the promise ofhope.
I have come into this world to see this:the sword drop from men's handseven at the height oftheir arc ofragebecause we have finally realizedthere is just one fleshwe can wound.
~Hafiz
As I embrace my deep emotion,And strive for conflict resolution,I live a life of full expression,Not shutdown by fear or suppression.
~Kaypacha,New Paradigm Astrology
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