Woman Turned To Stone (Soldiers, Warriors and Feminine Power)

September 2014

          Men need to speak out more about violence against women. We also need to speak out more about violence against Mother Earth. For, as Grandpa Sequoia recently reminded me, they are both absolutely a part of the same illness. Show me a traditional Earth-reverent society and I will show you one where violence against women simply does not exist. Men need to recognize and challenge the many forms that this violence takes in this mad modern world: it’s not only physical and sexual, but psychological and spiritual as well – all plagues upon all of our sisters… but also upon all men. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of how racism not only destroyed black people but white people as well (take a look at the current state of middle America – and many police forces – after generations of refusing to ever seriously deal with racism.) It is the same with sexism. It cripples men too; it destroys our spirits too. Most obviously in the inability of many of our brothers to ever have meaningful, egalitarian relationships with women. We’ve all lost a part of ourselves because of this false patriarchy. Men created the illness, and so it is all of our responsibility to help cure it. It has bred such fear and distrust and shallow understandings of each other… what kind of world is this?! How utterly out of balance we are with Mother Earth and her profound lessons about living together and real power. How is it that we refuse to listen to the wisdom of the greatest feminine power any of us can ever know? Doesn’t it follow that if men truly loved, honored, and respected Mother Earth it would be impossible for those same men to inflict this plague of violence upon women?

            So what to do?

Heavy Doses of High Sierra Mountain Medicine (Spiritual Crisis', Sick Hearts & Deconstructing “The Big Three”)

July-August 2014

“These mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently...”

–Brother John

            So I climb down from the mountain and check the news. Not surprisingly, once again another US and European bomb fueled religious war disguised as politics racks the so-called “Holy Land”. Not a coincidence, I suspect, that this theme has been on my mind a lot this summer. Sometimes, most times, while in the midst of these High Sierra mountain temples it is quite easy to ponder religion/spirituality/the Great Spirit/Mother Earth/God/science... whatever you choose to call the attempt to understand the Great Mystery is fine – I’m not concerned with labels or semantics. As with most so-called controversial subjects, rather than shying away from chatting about them I tend to just dive in headfirst and try to stir it up (always with a laugh and a smile, of course.) After reverently sauntering amongst these divine mountains and forests for a few years I’ve come to the conclusion that the root of most if not all of our modern dilemmas is simply this: the separation of Man/Woman from Earth (alas that this has been violently re-enforced by all the so-called ‘great’ religions). It is this arrogant notion that we are superior to and not a part of Mother Earth and all of her beings, particularly each other. Our connection is gone. Our spirit is lost. So perhaps the root of the crisis we face in this mad modern world is not political, nor economic, nor social, but… spiritual – something that some Indigenous folks have been saying for centuries.