Mettle

When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row.
--Alice Paul

January 11th is the birthday of Alice Paul, an extraordinary patriot who played a critical role in winning all American women the right to vote. She gained fame during a hunger strike she waged in 1917, after she and other suffragettes, nicknamed the “Iron-Jawed Angels,” were imprisoned for demonstrations before the White House. Paul survived state-sanctioned torture in the service of her just cause, and offers us a fine example of the virtue of Mettle.

What is Mettle? “Mettle,” according to the American Heritage dictionary, means “Courage and Fortitude.” We can know the virtue through its three homophones, which also offer us three faces of Alice Paul:

What is Metal? A substance like iron, like steel, with properties of Strength, Hardness... Resistance. It offers excellent Conduction of Energy. Metals are forged, and Alice Paul, a champion of non-violent Resistance, had her character forged by an upbringing on the family farm in the Hicksite Quaker community of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Hicksite Quakers sought the Divine in the refuge of nature, but eschewed petty materialism. Alice Paul thus sought meaning not in mere matter, but in what matters.

What is Meddle? To interfere, to intervene, to involve oneself. The Quakers believed in gender equality and working for the betterment of society. Alice Paul, after working in the settlement movement in New York, left for Birmingham, England, in 1907 to study social work. There she joined England’s most radical suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst, whose militant faction believed in "Deeds not words." During one of many civil disobedience arrests, Alice Paul took as her slogan, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

What is a Medal? A prize, given in recognition for great acts. A reward for Endurance. Alice Paul returned to the U.S., and in 1917 formed the National Woman's Party (NWP) to fight for the prize of women’s suffrage. "Silent Sentinels" stood outside the White House, but given that the nation was at war, many saw them as unpatriotic. Angry mobs attacked the women, and police arrested them on a trumped-up charge of "obstructing traffic." At Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia, the women faced brutal treatment. Paul commenced a hunger strike, for which she was moved to the prison’s psychiatric ward and force-fed raw eggs through a plastic tube. After the torture was revealed in a newspaper story, the women won their release and public sympathy. President Wilson publicly called for women to have the vote, and two years later, in 1920, the 19th Amendment granted women’s suffrage. It happened thanks to Alice Paul. She was our prize.

Alice Paul’s moving story was told in a wonderful film about her activism, called Iron Jawed Angels:

Fellow activist and writer Crystal Eastman said this about Alice Paul:

History has known dedicated souls from the beginning, men and women whose every waking moment is devoted to an impersonal end, leaders of a "cause" who are ready at any moment quite simply to die for it. But is it rare to find in one human being this passion for service and sacrifice combined first with the shrewd calculating mind of a born political leader, and second with the ruthless driving force, sure judgment and phenomenal grasp of detail that characterize a great entrepreneur.

Alice Paul died on July 9, 1977, in Moorestown, New Jersey, just a few miles from her birthplace and family home. Her life demonstrates that one person can make a difference. Through the continuing work of an institute that bears her name, her legacy lives on, inspiring those who continue to work for social justice.

Mettle. Metal. Meddle for a Medal. What value or principle matters enough to you to summon up your Resistance, your Strength, your Steel? It may not be a prison sentence or a hunger strike that tempers you. It may be the struggle to be a good mother, to remain sober, to give support to a friend in need. Whatever it be, step into the work, feel your Substance.

May we see the gates of Mettle, and perhaps make a home there.

Mitrachayk min HaKavod

Glory is like a circle in the water,/ Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself/ Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.
--Joan of Arc to Charles, Dauphin of France, in William Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, part I
 
Normally on TTV I tell a story giving a positive example of a virtue, as shown (and shone) through the life of a person, actual or legendary. Today’s story may be the first time I illustrate a virtue by its absence, highlighting a negative space whose dimensions give the shape of what’s missing. Fittingly, the virtue in question is one of the Jewish middot, many of which are expressed in terms of pitfalls to avoid rather than actions to embrace. Today’s story is a sad episode in American-Panamanian relations, the “Day of the Martyrs,” and our virtue: Mitrachayk Min HaKavod (Keeping Distance from Honor).
 
Mitrachayk (pronounced “mee-truh-HAKE”, with the ch pronounced like a guttural “h”) Min HaKavod has to do with avoiding pompousness or false pride. The Hebrew word kavod is usually translated as “honor,” although sometimes as “glory” or “respect.” The Talmud directs observant Jews to show kavod towards their parents and spouse, for example. Rabbi Jonathan Blake, Renée Holtz, and Birgit R. Sacher explain about this midda that it “is natural for people to seek honor from their fellow human beings. However, the rabbis consistently warn that honor cannot be acquired by one who pursues it. In fact, the sages warn that if you pursue honor, it will flee from you.”

Mitrachayk Min HaKavod again touches upon the slippery notion of Honor, a virtue we visited last year in the story of Giles Corey. At the time I pointed out that Honor has to do with staying true to principles of our higher Self (known in Feri as Ori or the Sacred Dove, and in Kabbalah as Neshamah). We can easily confuse the Self with the self, the small ego. Sometimes people attempt to assuage the smallness of their individual ego by associating with a larger group--say, for example, a sports team, a nation-state, or a religion. While larger than the individual, however, such assemblages have no guarantee of Transcendence.

In his novel Cat’s Cradle, author Kurt Vonnegut distinguishes between two species of such assemblages. One, called a karass, indicates “a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will.” He contrasts the karass with something he calls the granfalloon: a group whose members claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose association in fact has no meaning. A granfalloon leads its members not to Honor, but rather to vainglory.

Our story today might be titled “When Granfalloons Collide,” and it reminds me a little bit of West Side Story, as it started with a clash between two groups of ethnically divided teens, with tragic results. The time: January 9, 1964. The place: Panama--specifically, the Canal Zone. While Panamanians were grateful for the United States’ assistance in their winning independence from Colombia, many resented the U.S. appropriation of the Zone. Zonistas, expatriate Americans and their descendants living in the Zone, operated it as a U.S. colony, separated from the rest of Panama by a huge wall.

Only American flags flew in the Zone, a particularly touchy issue. In 1963, in recognition of Panamanian resentments, President Kennedy passed a law calling for the Panamanian flag to fly with the U.S. flag at all non-military sites in the Zone. Shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, however, the governor of the Canal Zone decided instead to forbid the flying of either flag. He underestimated the “patriotism” of the rather jingoistic Zonians.

At Balboa High School, a group of irate Zonista teens raised a U.S. flag up the empty flag pole in front of their school, and posted a guard to keep it there. Panamanian teens at the Instituto Nacional, angry at the snub, marched to Balboa High with their own national flag. The police had trouble controlling the mobs of increasingly angry Zonistas and Panamanians. As noted in Wikipedia:

A half-dozen Panamanian students, carrying their flag, approached the flagpole. The Zonians would have none of it. They surrounded the flagpole, sang the Star Spangled Banner, and rejected the deal between the police and the Panamanian students. Scuffling broke out. The Panamanians were driven back by the Zonian civilians and police. In the course of the scuffle, Panama's flag was torn.

As you can imagine, all hell broke loose. A riot of rock-throwing and pulling down of the “Fence of Shame” by nightfall had escalated to 5,000 angry protestors burning American businesses in the Zone. Fighting spread all over the nation of Panama, with shooting by military on both sides resulting in numerous casualties. Alison Weinstock, a webmaster of the Ruben Blades website maestravida.com, has assembled an amazing scrapbook about the Martyr’s Day riots here. In the end the riots destroyed $2 million in property, with 28 dead, 300 wounded and 500 arrested.

All for the sake of some flags. Granted, the anger had to do with real substantive issues about America’s imperialism and Panama’s sovereignty. Truly, though, most of the squabble had to do with “honoring” pieces of cloth--and citizens’ belief such “honor” could justify violence and destruction.

It’s an interesting coincidence that this essay on Mitrachayk min HaKavod fell during this weekend’s tragic events in Arizona, which has put a national spotlight on the potentially dangerous effect of divisive political rhetoric. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism--which certainly qualifies as one of Vonnegut’s granfalloons--some of our citizens may escalate from rhetoric into actions that don’t truly represent their higher Selves.

So let’s take a moment of mindfulness about the difference between a granfalloon and a karass, between our self and our Self, between Honor and simple vanity. Let’s remember that the virtue of true Humility can elevate a nation or people just as much as an individual.

May we see the gates of Mitrachayk min HaKavod, and perhaps make a home there.

Katandaan

Uli-uli magtanda ka!
--Tagalog expression, which translates as: Next time, learn from your experience!

Uli-uli magtanda ka!
Uli-uli magtanda ka!

Sorry, I just can’t help but chant it! Those syllables just seem to command me to sing and shout them. To me, the sentiment behind those syllables--urging us to profit from what happens to us, to remember our history, to evolve--it’s just such a basic cornerstone of spiritual practice.

Uli-uli magtanda ka!

It’s a truism in American culture that we enshrine what’s new, what’s young, what’s glitzy. It’s so... revolutionary (and perhaps evolutionary) instead to rediscover what’s old, what’s true-because-it’s-been-tried. And that’s why I’m happy to share with you today the Filipino virtue of Katandaan (Experience/Age), and to do so on the birthday of a wonderful and revolutionary lady named Melchora Aquino de Ramos, a grande dame of the Philippine Revolution.

In the Tagalog language, the root “tanda” carries connotations of “age,” but also of “sign” or “symbol”; the word “tandaan” means “to remember” or “to remark upon.” Katandaan, then, can translate as “the quality that remembers,” that is, Seniority, Experience... Wisdom.

Melchora Aquino certainly gives us a story worth remembering. She was born January 6, 1812, on the isle of Luzon in the “Spanish East Indies,” just north of Manila. Despite her peasant heritage and never having had a chance to attend school, she learned to read and write. She sang in church when she was young, and later married a tribal chief. She bore six children, being widowed when her youngest was only 7 years old. She opened a “sari-sari” store--sort of a Filipino version of a five-and-dime--to make ends meet.

The Spanish had colonized the Philippines in the 1570s, bringing industry and education to the archipelago, but also monopolizing its resources and dominating the populace. In August, 1896, Spanish authorities discovered that a secret Filipino nationalist organization called the Katipunan planned to secede from the Spanish Empire. This brought the islands into open armed revolt.

During the outbreak of fighting, Melchora, already 84 years of age, fed and tended wounded revolutionaries in her little shop, and she allowed the rebels to meet in her home. Encouraged by her motherly advice and prayers, the Katipuneros nicknamed her Tandang Sora, which means something along the lines of “Tough Old Broad.” When the Spaniards learned about her, they interrogated her to learn the rebels’ secrets, but she would not crack. The Guardia Civil arrested Tandang Sora and deported her to the Mariana Islands.

Once the U.S. took control of the Philippines in 1898, Ms. Aquino, like other exiles, returned to the Philippines. She lived quietly until her death on March 2, 1919 at the age of 107. Her remains lie in her own backyard--now called Himlayang Pilipino Memorial Park--in Quezon City. A section of the town was named for her, and she has appeared on Filipino coins and bank notes.

Melchora Aquino de Ramos is a fabulous demonstration of Crone power--showing that experience can bring Wisdom and Compassion, and that age does not rule out Vitality, Courage, and Tenacity.

Who are the Wise Old Women and Wise Old Men in your life? What trials have they survived? How have their travails served as crucibles for their own lives, and what can you learn from their examples? Take a moment today to think about an elder who has grown rich and vital and strong from life experience, and then holler, exclaim, or simply whisper quietly to yourself:

Uli-uli magtanda ka!

You, too, can be enriched by your experience. 

May we see the gates of Katandaan, and perhaps make a home there.

Proudflesh

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they've been set down --

and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There's a name for it on horses,

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle,

small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black cord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

--Jane Hirschfield

---
My friend Jim Ashe, a very talented analyst and psychiatrist, once read me this poem on a day we spent telling each other war stories from our lives. Technically, the “proud flesh” scar of a horse is in fact weaker than the normal tissue it grows over, but that doesn’t detract from the beauty of the poem. As someone who bears the scars of a love that went horribly wrong, I thought there should be a word for the quality of Resilience, Humility, and Love that lucky ones can take away from such heartaches. I found it in this wonderful poem from the collection Of Gravity and Angels by San Francisco poet Jane Hirshfield, who is gratefully acknowledged. Virtue, thy name is Proudflesh. 

May we see the gates of Proudflesh, and perhaps make a home there. 

Graphic mended heart of stone by artist d.goth also gratefully acknowledged. 

Bëraht-nessī

Glow with the certainty that rises from your sorrow, your pain, your anger, bewilderment, and fear. There is something fine being made within you. You have the power of change. Bring the light.
--Thorn Coyle, from her blog Know Thyself

Happy Berchtoldstag! Celebrated in Switzerland, Lichenstein, and Alsace, January 2 honors the Goddess Berchta, whose name means “The Bright One.” The Alemmani, a Germanic tribe who lived along the shores of the Rhine in the first millienium B.C.E, venerated Berchta as patroness of weaving, animals, and the hunt. During this time of winter darkness, we also remember her virtue, that of Bëraht-nessī (Old High German, pronounced like “BUR-ate-NEZ-ee,” meaning Brightness).

Who was Berchta? More widely known as Perchta (and related to the English name “Bertha”), she had worshippers across the Southern Alps. In some tellings, she has two forms: Maiden, beautiful and white as snow like her name, or Crone--elderly, haggard, and fierce.

Berchta in her fierce Crone aspect.

The two forms reflect her behavior. During this time of the year, Berchta would visit farms and homesteads, ensuring the year’s spinning had been completed; the animals well-tended; and that people had feasted heartily on fish and gruel in her honor. If yes, children of the household might awaken the next morning to find a silver coin in their shoes. If no, they would be cut open and their innards stuffed with stones and straw! (Frankly, I find St. Nick’s choice of coal in the stocking less forbidding!)

Many traditions also claim one can recognize Berchta by one of her legs, oversized and shaped like that of a swan. Some felt this indicated her ability to shapechange into animal form, others that it symbolized her affiliation with spinning, as one foot would work a treadle on a spinning wheel.

As her cult syncretized with Christian traditions, Berchta became associated with the nearby Christian feast of the Epiphany, which completes the Twelve Days of Christmas and in some areas is still called Berchtentag (“Berchta’s Day”).

On Berchtoldstag, my mind turns to this idea of Epiphany, which means both a Christian feast (when the Men of Wisdom found the Savior) but also a moment of intuitive Realization. We sometimes call such events “light-bulb moments,” as the arrival of insight feels like a light turning on in the darkness: Bëraht-nessī. Do such moments fall upon us randomly?

No, and the story of Berchta shows us this. She brings Bëraht-nessī, this Illumination, only to those who have done the hard work of the past year: spinning the loose strands of flax or wool into coherent yarn, looking after the animals. Likewise, those who walk the spiritual path and face the darkness of their own selves--wrapping up the loose ends, shepherding the beasts of their own fear or anger--can look forward, sooner or later, to the reward of Bëraht-nessī’s arrival, the form of a Goddess who can attain feats of Transformation.

I find it typically Pagan, too, that Berchta demands her dedicants engage in Feasting and Jollity. Withdrawal from the world does not work our path. (The Buddha, too, eschewed extreme asceticism as a dead-end to spiritual progress.) Living our lives with Vigor and Engagement makes our path. The challenges we face, the chaos like unspun flax, the unruly beasts of our inner world--they are the work. Thorn Coyle’s most recent posting on this subject, Lightbringer, knits nicely with this idea, so I refer you to her site for further meditation on this theme.

So on this first day of the rest of 2011, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to the work of Self-Creation. And let’s look forward to the unpredictable moment when our work pays off with Bëraht-nessī, the Epiphany that gives us Vigor, Hope, and Inspiration to keep going.

May we see the gates of Bëraht-nessī, and perhaps make a home there.