Archive for June, 2010
Thoughts on Sex and Language
We depend on poetry and story to enrich our courtships and partnerships, and to advance our sexual pursuit and eventual sexual partnering. Sexy language is inventive and fun. Sex and language combined create an intoxicating brew. One might even say that the Sextale and Sextini are the true love cocktail.
This use of language is not reserved only for partners or potential partners. Our history is equally long in using sexy language to address higher powers. Thousands of years ago, poets and worshippers routinely addressed deities to ask for advice and intervention in daily life. One supplicant was the legendary Sappho, poet of Lesbos. In her Hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho achieves a marvelous balance between submissive and girlfriend as she pleads with the goddess to turn the poet’s spurned offerings to a reluctant lover into irresistible lures.
To fully appreciate the weight of this address by Sappho, remember that Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality (in Roman mythology, Venus) who was born when Cronus cut off Uranus’s genitals and tossed them into the sea; from the sea foam Aphrodite arose and was born. She is also the wife of Hephaestus (eternal cuckold) the lover of Ares, and later the lover of Adonis.
Here is my translation of the poem.
Hymn to Aphrodite, by Sappho
Glittering, deathless Aphrodite on your altar,
Zeus’s daughter, enslaver, I beseech you!
No, I beg you, dear Goddess, do not torment me
By grinding my spirit to dust.
If ever you’ve heard me pleading to you,
Then return to me now just as you did when
You left your father’s shining palace,
Yoking your faithful sparrows to your sky-car.
Humming down the currents of heaven’s airway
They delivered you to earth’s fecund black breast,
And there you rose with sudden radiance,
Goddess, before me prostrate in the sand.
With a smile that buckled my knees, you asked
What pain I bore, who had wronged me so,
And what would calm and comfort my racing mind.
Why, you asked, had I summoned you
To my side. “Who is it you are seeking
To satisfy your hunger? Who do you desire?
Who has abused you now, Sappho? Who is it
That treats you so unjustly?
“Abide. She evades you now, but soon she’ll pursue.
Rejecting your gifts, soon she’ll rush to give gifts.
She says she doesn’t love you, but soon all she is
Will burn with desire for you and only you.”
Come to me, my Goddess, and comfort me.
Remove this bitterness from my heart, my mind,
And give me what I hunger for. Goddess,
In all my wars, I beg you, fight beside me.
There is nothing coy or secretive in the exchanges between the rebuffed poet-lover and her goddess. There is no question as to who is in charge, but the two meet as friends. There is unmistakable affection between them, and one has no doubt that the resisting object of Sappho’s affection will have no chance against such a potent love-combination as the ardent poet and all-powerful goddess.
Water Doesn’t Lie
A thousand years ago, a colorful bird
flew out of an ancient tree in Persia, just as
a thoughtful boy opened his eyes. He never
saw it lift, only sweep over him in flight. This
is how he came to speak of God: as something
lifting out of view, as something sweeping over
us once we’re awake. Five hundred years ago, a
young woman saw her father beheaded in one
stroke by a desperate man leaning off a horse.
She would always fear horses and had a series
of unforgiving men and the last told her as he
left, “It was the desperate one, not the horse.”
A hundred years ago, my grandmother and
dozens like her, desperate for freedom, rode
the hammock of the sea to America. It took
weeks for the ground beneath them to stop
swaying. And thirty years ago, my father
couldn’t breathe on land; kept dreaming
of his mother’s crossing. Compelled, he
built a boat and taught me how to sail.
Now when I can’t breathe, I make it to
the sea where God fills me like a sail. At
times, I’m lifted by a wave I can’t see.
Our Measuring Lives
It’s not news that many of us appear to be most talented at shattering things. In every culture we learn early. In the west our house is better than the neighbor’s house. Our part of town is superior to someone else’s neighborhood. Our family car is cooler, our school clothes sharper, our teachers smarter than yours. Even our God is more righteous than other gods. As we grow older, we attach our feelings of superiority to our jobs and choice of partners, our appearance (our teeth are whiter, our waistlines slimmer), our cars (again—cars are lightning rods all through our measuring lives). If we make more money than someone else, that’s all that really counts. We are better than that person. We spend our lives, it seems, defining
ourselves and those we care for as superior and apart. We like the warm glow that comes of the conviction that we are separate and outstanding, chosen by a higher power to bask in spotlights while the less fortunate plod along elsewhere.
This would all be pathological enough, but we don’t often stop there. Troubled in mind and spirit, we also build walls to keep others out. We dance our celebrative dance of the self in our houses of mirrors and attack the safe havens of others. We want them to be like us, or even better, to serve us. If they hesitate in honoring
us, we want to tear down their walls and houses, their art and history. We want to tell them how and what to worship, what to eat and wear, where to work, and how often (and in which ways) they can have sex. We want the wrinkles that make them unique and intriguing ironed out. If that doesn’t work, we want to kill them, erase them. We want to leave no trace of them to remind us that there are obstinate. Others who will not be just like us. We want to be rid of the cold heat that their mysterious presence fans in us.
We do these things because we don’t feel right. “We have just enough religion to make us hate,” Jonathan Swift said, “but not enough to make us love one another.” No matter how many creature comforts we accumulate, no matter how secure we think we are, we know that something is wrong, terribly wrong. The cause cannot be
us. It has to be them. It has to be.
That others disappoint us can be conveniently explained away, or enough so that we needn’t trouble ourselves much with responsibility. It must be their tragic flaws that make them fail to measure up in our eyes. If it is their fault, then we can avoid the hard look inward that reveals the tragedy, not of individuals, but of the Us/Them scenario we compulsively create.
Pilot Light
Sorry. As soon as I talk about it, it moves out of view. Let me try again. There is a teacher, a teaching, a moment that keeps working me. I became aware of it four years ago when I met several burn survivors; heroic individuals whose faces have been removed, whose limbs have been disfigured. They have nowhere to hide. Inside is outside for them. I could see their beauty, each like a lantern broken by the storm; their flicker steady and bright though everything that carries it seems shattered. Two years later, my own struggle to lose weight gave me compassion for those who are covered by too much. I realized no one sets out to be overweight. And since, I’ve had silent conversations while riding the train: the obese man’s eyes meeting mine; his crying out: “I don’t know how this happened. I’m not what you see! I woke up in this mountain. I’m trying to get out!” Now the teacher, the teaching, the moment was saying: You see, some are stripped away and some are buried. But everyone is in there. And just last month, my good friend Eileen lost her mother at 88. At the funeral home, I was fixed on this picture of Margaret when she was 35. Her eyes kept flashing vibrant, with a sense of self, and a sense of what holds the world up. Things I never saw in her Alzheimer eyes. Now at the grave I’m watching one of her ancient friends sigh as small birds named Margaret fly from her mouth. Is this the passage no one can escape? Must we all struggle with not being seen for who we are? Is this the turning point in our journey? Is being who we are anyway the threshold? We are all burned. We are all buried. We are all trapped in some way by the cataract of years. We are all fresh and lighted within. So pass nothing or no one by. The light is on. The teacher, the teaching, the moment is waiting.
Happy Father’s Day
“Any man can be a Father but it takes someone special to be a dad.” —Anne Geddes
“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” —Charles Wadsworth
“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” —George Herbert
One of the things I dislike about father’s day is the assumption that all fathers like tools, or steak, or ties. Google’s homepage today spells out Google in ties and bowties, and, oddly, something that looks like a stethoscope but may be those kinds of neck ornaments that Southern men often wear.
I have never bought my father a tool, or a tie, though I suppose we might have gone out for steak over the years. But the best way to honor Dad, of course, is to tell him how much he means to you. I want to honor all the fathers reading, but I also want to honor my dad for how he’s shaped me, influenced me, gifted me with traits and qualities and work ethic. These gifts are intangible, and I’ve found that even those times when I’ve felt angry at my dad, or frustrated with myself for being like my dad, I’ve also been able to step and marvel at the woman I’ve become of him.
Happy father’s day, Dad, and all dads!
Reclamation
In guiding people through the Soul’s Dream journey, I am consistently in awe toward the end of the journey by what each traveler has reclaimed in the terrain of their Spirit, Heart, Mind, and Body intelligences. A definition of reclamation is: the reclaiming of desert, marshy, or submerged areas, or other wasteland for cultivation or other use. While our unconscious relationships to our energy, feeling, thoughts, and forms of our lives can create the desert, marshy wasteland, our earnest desire to awaken the submerged parts of ourselves leads to the recognition of our unique gifts.
When people courageously reclaim and integrate the brilliance of their innate gifts within their Whole IQ, they begin dismantling their addiction to reactivity and the illusion of control by forging a way of being and impacting the world that brings greater presence, accountability, and creativity to their lives.
Whether they are breaking up toxic energetic patterns, cultivating greater honesty to listen to and speak from their hearts, realizing that their thoughts have been geared to looking good, or seeing that the forms of their life are hollow and don’t express who they truly are anymore—all of them are reclaiming the GOLD of their true potential as they move toward the realization of their Soul’s Dream. When we don’t reclaim our inner truths, we end up betraying ourselves and others.
What may be a truth or passion that is submerged within you that perhaps, out of fear, is in danger of becoming part of the wasteland of unrealized potential within you? Reclaim its gift, and even it feels uncomfortable, express it.
Working with Your Partner
In this age of entrepreneurial opportunities and Internet-fueled cottage industries, it’s not all that odd for one to be in business with a significant other. It’s a richly rewarding scenario. The two of you get to spend lots of time together every day. You are equal partners in your family’s economic adventures. You see each other in commerce roles, which are very different from traditional family and relationship roles.
Of course, the same strengths inherent in this model can be perceived as dangerous weaknesses. In the heat of business battle, you may not like what you see in your partner’s behavior. Perhaps you and your partner become increasingly competitive, even to the point where you begin to feel (and act on) genuine irritation for each other. Workplace tension in a relationship quickly manifests at home, breaking many families and partner bonds to pieces. One must be present and ever vigilant against going to sleep where your conduct towards your workplace and life partner are concerned. Sometimes, you will need to be imaginative to maintain balance and stoke the fires of love.
Writing Prompt
You and your partner work together in a business. For this exercise, write short poems to each other that flirt. Write them as if you don’t know each other very well but are really attracted to each other. Write several of these poems, growing bolder, more suggestive. Make a special dinner with each other, or go out to a restaurant you both love. Odds are you will talk a lot about the poems you wrote to each other. And after that? Well, you may want to write about that, too.
Losing Yourself
We’re having lunch at the harbor,
salads and tea, and Bob starts talking
about losing himself in certain pieces
of music. Not losing track of time. Or
forgetting to meet me in half an hour.
More that who he is pools, for the mo-
ment, in a larger sea. He says it’s scary,
’cause he’s not sure he will come back
as himself. But being drawn out this
way makes him feel alive. Now Susan
talks about the small woodpecker who
flew into our window during the week.
How she found it in the flowers, fright-
ened but alert. How she tried to help it.
How she pinched its little legs and no-
thing. It had broken its toothpick of a
back. She put it in a towel, in a shoebox.
When I came home, I saw her holding
the little thing, its soft eyes flitting. It
was drinking drops of water from her
finger. I will never forget that drinking.
The next day the little one died. Susan
is still sad. Says she won’t be the same.
We peck at our salads and drink our tea.
The light spills between us. The three of
us drinking from each other’s fingers.
Oprah interviews Mark Nepo—6/28 and 7/4—don’t miss it!
Huge news! Mark recently sat down for an interview with Oprah Winfrey at Harpo Studios in Chicago for Oprah’s Soul Series on SIRIUS XM Radio, Channel 156.
You can listen by tuning into SIRIUS on Monday, 6/28/10 @ 11am and 4pm ET and again on Sunday, 7/4/10 at NOON ET.
HERE’S THE LINK. Consider signing up for a free trial so you can hear the show. SIRIUS offers a month trial period: www.xmradio.com/oprahradio
Clips from the interview will also be posted on oprah.com following the interview. Click here for more information.
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