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?

Perhaps the first act is simply to testify, to bear witness. Having seen, very first hand, the results of these forms of violence against women several times in my life, I’m angry. On several occasions, it’s gone far past anger towards those who’ve destroyed so many lives. In weaker moments, I have felt hatred towards those who caused it, and at times have wanted to give in to the primal urge to return violence upon them. Given the reality of this world, I remain unsure if I am 100% behind Ghandi, King and absolute non-violence – there are certainly things for which I would fight. However, I am 100% sure that I did not like what that emotion did to me or anyone else, and it certainly didn’t undo any of the damage. “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” –MLK. In my experience, hate makes you ill, weak, and in the end physically and spiritually drained because you end up carrying someone else’s awful spiritual sickness – and that can only destroy your own spirit. I remember that weight well. So I must try not to re-act out of anger anymore, but the memory of it can and should motivate me to pro-act.

My own life has been dramatically altered as a result of the violence done by other men to women I have known. And loved. So if I spend all this time listening to and learning from Mother Earth, honoring that feminine power, I would be a hypocrite and a fool if I did not speak out about what is happening to our sisters. Recently some thoughts came to me after another High Sierra saunter when I learned the story of Tissiack, “Woman Turned To Stone”, sitting in the heart of Ahwahnee, “The Place of the Gaping Mouth” (most people call her ‘Half-Dome’ in beautiful Yosemite Valley.) This, combined with recent headlines about violent athletes and abuse in the sports world, more violence by soldiers and the “Big Three” religions against women all over the globe, and some recent conversations I’ve had with friends, has prompted me to try to make some sort of coherent statement. But I am tardy in this testimony, it was needed years ago.

            Before I get into the dramatic story of Tissiack, I want to elaborate on what I’m truly trying to address with this discussion. We need to redefine some terms and ponder their deeper significance. Anyone who has tuned into news headlines recently has heard about all these star athletes in all kinds of trouble. What is truly sad - secondary to the damage done to the women and children involved - is that this news is hardly surprising or shocking to us at all. It is so common. It has become “normal,” and this is yet another spiritual illness we face in this society. Many men here are taught to be “soldiers”, to control and dominate, to mindlessly inflict pain and, in the case of war, to blindly kill (anyone else notice the sharp rise in advertisements for all things military in the past 10-15 years or so? Or their direct attachment to sporting events?) Today, 24-7, we are fed images of mass violence; our so-called leaders use it to solve any and all problems and are considered “weak” if they will not (Brother Obama, you have failed your test of political courage. Like all US Presidents, you too are now a war criminal.) Clearly this attitude translates to sports, entertainment, relationships, and mainstream society in general. After a lifetime of brainwashing, many men here can’t just “turn it off.”

Try this experiment: see if you can find one person you know who does not have some story about the effects of violence against women. I bet you cannot. So I don’t think I need to get too much into the tragic results of this media and cultural onslaught, or the depth of its impact upon our society and the world. Perhaps these news headlines can at least provoke an honest discussion about all of this. That is my intention, at least.

Now I admit that I really enjoy watching championship sports and even football. I grew up with it, and have spent many hours in front of the TV chewing fingernails as the final seconds tick away and the tension builds and builds into ecstatic celebration, or heart-breaking disappointment (I’m a Red Sox fan, I know it all very well!) I enjoy seeing really talented people do things really well - whether it be music or art or sport. Nothing wrong with watching the game, when taken by itself; when in balance; when separated from this “soldier” nonsense. But in the bigger picture, there’s something fundamental and very profound missing in this “soldier” culture with which we have been bombarded our whole lives. Men are never taught how to honor feminine power, nor ever taught ritual or ceremony (our “ceremonies” are absurd sports and political rallies). I once had the honor of being part of a coming of age ceremony for a young woman on the Diné (Navajo) Reservation. It was profound and moving. It gave her and everyone else there meaning and identity. This sort of ritual is also something that is totally absent from mainstream society. My point? This lifelong ceremonial path has to start with honoring Mother Earth, with that re-connection to her. Might I suggest that the absence of ceremony is the basis of most of these tragic problems concerning violence, particularly against women, against femininity.

Now contrast this idea of the “soldier” with something I read recently about what it was and is to be a “warrior”, in the traditional Native American sense, for example. It is something that we should consider when we try to address this plague of violence in our world. As I’ve said before, language has power; it’s about time we used it properly. In the spectacular compilation of Native American female authors, Spider Woman’s Granddaughters, Paula Gunn Allen wrote:

“There are a number of spiritual codes that govern a warrior’s life, counting coup on the enemy, capturing the enemy, or stealing horses from an enemy being only means of demonstrating one’s spiritual acumen. The main point was just that: development of the spiritual acumen or competence…  The old warriors used to say, “It is a good day to die.” They had death songs ready for chanting when their time came. How different from Vietnam, where men had their minds destroyed along with their bodies because they were never taught how to live in a sacred manner. People who are raised in ways that secure their unattachment to Earth, kin and spirit can never walk the ritual path of war. They can only destroy and be destroyed, horribly.
What is significant about the heroines in these stories, as about all warriors (as distinguished from soldiers), is their attachment: to self, to relatives, to Earth and sky.”

              So perhaps with this ancient attachment to Earth, to ceremony, mindless mass violence cannot exist. Contrary to 500 years of propaganda, Indigenous warfare rarely if ever included the utter annihilation of an enemy or the raping and pillaging so common to European warfare. Because at the center of those conflicts was far more ritual, respect, honor, and this attachment as opposed to any perverted notions of ‘total war’ and mass destruction. Ponder the significance of the belief that in battle it is more courageous and honorable to merely touch (‘count coup’) an enemy than to kill him. Today, ‘soldiers’ touch video game-like buttons and massacre dozens of people a thousand miles away in an instant. I will never honor that, mr. ‘soldier.’ Look at how many of our veterans have returned mentally and spiritually shattered in the last few decades, doing unspeakable damage to their wives, families, themselves. It is not a coincidence.

With a renewed sense of ritual, ceremony and spiritual reverence towards Mother Earth, this mass violence against women could not exist. In traditional Earth-reverent societies, many of who are matrilineal, violence and abuse against women is simply unheard of. If you honor the feminine at the very core of your society, there is no need for a Western idea of feminism, for example. I admit that sometimes I do not understand the middle class white woman concept of female power advertised by some folks – at times it looks a lot like white male power (I have zero interest in a female president dropping the same damn bombs all over the Earth that male presidents do). Ask a female elder in a traditional society if she has ever felt unequal or abused or what power she has. Chances are that she has been honored her whole life, and will not even understand your question.
            In this society, it is far past urgent that we stop worshipping the deceptive and destructive idea of being a “soldier,” of being “a real man.” There is no honor in attempting to dominate and control. There is no ‘glory’ in our wars. There is no respect for ritual or ceremony or spirit in that path. There is no understanding of feminine power when you are not reverent towards the Earth. It is the root of all abuse.

<breathe>

So, back in the blessed Sierra Nevada Mountains, majestic Tissiack sits in the center of Yosemite Valley, outshining all the other glorious landscapes that overwhelm your senses when in that divine place. From every angle she stands out. Sitting upon several different vantage points I have gazed for hours, almost hypnotized, into Ahwahnee. I hope that I have heard her voice. The traditional story as I have read it (there are no more Ahwahneechee people alive to tell us the original story) says that one day a woman and her husband were walking through the valley. The woman became very thirsty and impatient and ran ahead to a lake (Mirror Lake on the eastern end of Yosemite Valley). Rather than waiting for her husband she greedily drank and drank, until all the water was gone. When her husband came up to the lakeside he could not drink, became very angry, and so scolded and then beat her. She screamed awful things at him and tried to hit him with her basket. At that moment they were turned to stone as an eternal lesson for all the people who would ever walk through the valley. They say that you can still see the woman’s crying face in the side of the cliff (Half-Dome) and across the water you can see the man (North Dome) trying to turn away from her flying basket (Basket Dome). It is a profound reminder etched forever in granite: men must never hit or abuse women, and we all must never speak or act with such disrespect towards husbands, wives, partners, family, friends.

Such a tale demonstrates the massive importance of these stories, these so-called mythologies. In actuality, they are spiritual lessons by which we are taught how to live right. They are constant reminders coming from the land, coming from listening to and honoring Mother Earth, rather than trying to dominate and control her.

So it is that when men study the Earth and humbly listen to her voice, we are constantly reminded to honor feminine power and to never, never abuse our sisters. We begin to reject what we have been taught about false masculine power and control and domination and, finally, slowly, begin to understand real power.