Going Off Her Meds and Heading for Mexico

“Breaking Up With My Meds” is the first post of a new series of incredibly brave articles drolly titled “Going Off.”  Diana Spechler is the writer, and her column appears in The New York Times, under the category Anxiety. The last two paragraphs grabbed me. They talk about our modern society’s yearning “to become spotless on the inside,” a flute tune that resonates with the drum I’ve been beating for some time — our need to reclaim the original definition of virginity.

“I wish I could meet that young woman,” I thought at the time. “She is a real live virgin.” I promptly forgot her name.

It is the magic of the Writers Conference of San Miguel de Allende that Sunday afternoon, yesterday, standing in the gardens of the Hotel Real de Minas, I asked a new acquaintance what she wrote. “I’ve just begun a series for The New York Times,” she answered, “about going off my meds for depression.”

And so begins a friendship, Facebook and otherwise. Diana Spechler. You should remember her name.

“Be who you are,” she reminded him.

One of the things I like doing on this blog is sharing stories of women who show up and make a difference, just by being who they are.  With tongue only slightly in cheek, I refer to them as “real virgins,” because they fulfill that original meaning of the word “virgin,” a term which had nothing to do with physiology. A virgin was someone who was undefined by any human relationship; she was one-in-herself, whole, complete, intact, un-fragmented, un-captured, self-governed. She looked to no other human for authority to think and act according to her highest sense of good.

My friend and mentor (coincidentally, her name is Virginia, but I call her Ginny in my book) posted an entry on her blog today, recounting a story which is ancient, but has relevance today. All these problems in the Middle East — it’s HISTORY, amigos, tribal history. Whether or not one says she “believes” in the Bible, it is a book full of tribal history, history that is verified through other sources and channels. If you don’t know any ancient history scholars, just look to the folks at The History Channel, right?

If you take the time or have the inclination to browse through what Christians call the Old Testament, but is also known as The Hebrew Scriptures, you can  get an inkling of the longstanding nature of the problems still plaguing the “Holy Land.” Plays well with others, was not a prominent character trait in most  tribal leaders. But as Lynne Bundesen makes clear in her excellent book The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture, at every crucial point, showing up at every step of spiritward progress in the biblical narrative, there was always a woman, listening, forgiving, giving counsel, sometimes taking direct action on her own. In her blog today Ginny recounts the story of Abigail, who saved not-yet-king David from the dark side. Abigail was a “real virgin.” The world could use more of those these days. Want to volunteer? Well, read about Abigail first. You can do that here.

“Pain and oppression do not have the last word.”

“For me. . . spirituality and the work for justice are entirely inseparable. If either one is authentic, it leads to the other.”

I’m not Catholic, but I stand in awe of those who serve as Sister Pat Farrell has through her life. Her grace and courage have placed her at the head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Read about the crossroads this organization is approaching with the Vatican. 

Are the 57,000 sisters in the United States insufficiently or incorrectly spiritual? Is their primary mission to run hospitals, work with the poor and keep their mouths shut? Actually, listening to the interviews that Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air has conducted with Sister Farrell and with Bishop Leonard Blair (the Vatican-appointed guy charged with bringing the sisters into line), the main complaint is that the sisters have been silent on issues relating to birth control, abortion and same sex marriage.  Seems most of them have been doing their jobs and keeping their mouths shut, but if Sister Pat is any example, they’ve been praying hard and letting Love lead the way in each situation.

I’ve written a lot, though not lately, in this blog about “virgin qualities.” The genius of Guadalupe, the relevance of virgin qualities however they appear on the human scene, is that there is no preaching, doctrine or diatribe involved. It is the virgin presence that speaks for itself, and no words are able to express it. But, oh, how powerful it is. Sister Pat knows. That’s why she can stand at this crossroads and speak of her “deep knowing that pain and oppression do not have the last word.” Many of us will be standing with her in spirit.

 

Keeping Company with Older Virgins

I miss my mom. I miss my mother-in-law. Both in their own ways gave me focus inspiration, and guidance. The relationships we had were not always comfortable, but now that they are both gone, and I look around the room at family dinners and don’t see anyone older than ME, I get a little panicky. Who made me the matriarch? I never even had children — except that sixty-five year old perpetual teenager I’ve been married to for 43 years this summer, who just started up his new Harley down in the basement and is going over to see someone who can make his pipes sound louder.

This blog has been centered, more or less, on experiences and examples illustrating what I call “virgin qualities.” Just to review, in case you don’t want to follow that link I went to a lot of trouble to insert, being “virgin” means being centered, untouched, un-invaded, whole, complete, and intact. Another virgin quality — being focused. In that regard, I have lately been a whole lot less than virginal. Witness these first two paragraphs.

I need practice. I need a good example.

I’ve found one. One of my mother-in-law’s best friends from long ago has been blogging. Joyce Wethe Robertson is in her nineties. I just found her blog through her daughter Robin, who is my Facebook friend. Robin posted photos of a trip to Catalina she and her mom took day before yesterday, and included a link to the blog post Joyce made about it. I read through it, and then, like one does after eating the first lichee nut fresh off the tree, (they happen to be in season here, but I digress) I went for another. And one after that. And one more. Pure delicious gold.  And she has enough posts to provide me a daily dose for weeks to come! How have I been missing these?

People have been asking me if I’m writing again.  Well, I’m making a stab at it. Sort of.  I feel like I entered one of those outer space wormholes last Christmas, and am just now emerging to …. well, I’m still not sure. So it’s good to hear a familiar voice, well-written, tightly focused words of encouragement, and have a laugh, as well.  So I say to those who want to read me, read Joyce for a while. Thanks, Joyce, for “being there.”

Here’s the link again: Getting Older is Getting Better, a blog by Joyce Wethe Robertson

 

Majora Carter — Being Present in the Ghetto, Making a Difference

Maria Hinojosa interviews Majora Carter on why she still lives in the South Bronx and how she’s making a difference. Parks from dump sites! Majora is a good example of Guadalupe qualities — show up and make a difference by being what you are: whole, intact, un-invaded, and powerful.

http://www.worldcompass.org/sites/all/modules/flowplayer/flowplayer/flowplayer.swf

If a Married Lesbian Couple Saves 40 Teens from the Norway Massacre and No One Writes About it, Did it Really Happen?

If a Married Lesbian Couple Saves 40 Teens from the Norway Massacre and No One Writes About it, Did it Really Happen?. Yes it did! Who gets to define who’s a hero? WE DO — every time we tell the story.

Paquita La Del Barrio — Got Her Inner Guadalupe Goin’

A recent post on Jaltemba Jalapeno enlightened me as to the finer points of cleaning rags. Who knew? I’ve always just torn up old nightgowns and t-shirts! But it also introduced me to Paquita La Del Barrio. Ya gotta love this lady! After watching the video in the post, I looked her up on Wikipedia. A brief English translation: “Married” at fifteen to a guy 42 years old with a whole other family, she had a rocky start in life. But she also had a later marriage that lasted thirty-one years, until she was widowed in 2004. Today she galvanizes the feminine troops encouraging them to stand up to machista attitudes.

This may be the most conflicted of blogposts I’ve ever witnessed. Thanks, Darlene, for the domestic wisdom, and thanks, enlightened webmaster Johan, for the feminist riff on it!

My Inner Guadalupe Is Getting to Work

This is to let subscribers to this Welcome to Virgin Territory blog know what I’m doing. Or at least as I’m trying to figure it out, I thought I’d let you in on my process.  A new blog of mine, “Clothed With the Sun, Feet on the Ground,” is where I’m starting to get back to doing what I used to be pretty good at — before I turned into a reactionary, screaming angry harridan who internalized all those feelings, moved to Mexico, got embroiled with countless health issues and almost checked out. What I was pretty good at back before I got sidetracked by all that was finding a spiritual perspective on daily life.

Although the recent craziness in the U.S. capital has nudged me back toward the angry harridan position, I am refusing to go. I insist, dang it, that I will draw on those Inner Guadalupe virgin qualities, take refuge in virginity — innate wholeness, sanity, and steadfast presence of Mind. (OK, I’m repeating this to myself, reminding myself. It’s a constant process.) My true treasure — my ability to love life and live love — remains pure and intact. No one in Washington can touch that.

I’m not quite up to loving my fellow beings on the political scene. Maybe because I’m still American and they’re like, well, family. You expect a lot more from your family, and it hurts more when they hurt you.

I’m reminded of a story I heard as a jail chaplain. Two inmates shared a cell. Each felt they were in jail because of betrayal and false charges by someone close to them, one by an employer, the other by a brother-in-law. After “getting religion” they each knew that love and forgiveness were key elements toward winning their freedom — freedom on so many levels. But each felt incapable of loving or forgiving the person close to them.

“So, why don’t I take on sending love and light to your brother-in-law, and you send love and light to my @#$%* boss?” one asked the other one day.

“Agreed,” came the reply. “I don’t know your @#$% boss, but he can’t be as bad as my @#$%. brother-in-law. I’ll be happy to send him love and light.” So they did. And it wasn’t long before both the @#$%s had rethought their stories and all charges were dropped against the two cellmates.

I’m wondering if that can’t work on an international level. Maybe I should ask my Canadian friends to send a little love and light to our U.S. Congress and President. I, in the meantime, will take on the drug violence in Mexico. And that’s where “Clothed with the Sun, Feet on the Ground” is headed. I’m making that blog a frequent practice in sending love and light to that particular situation. I invite you to join me there, and on the corresponding Facebook page put up by my friend Chris Raymond, Corazon a Corazon – A Spiritual Defense of Mexico. That’s an open page, which means if you have a little love and light to lend you can post it yourself. Heart to heart, we’ll get through all this.

* Did you catch the * after the @#$%? I decided to use @#$% because all profanity is either sexist, racist, unintelligible or unimaginative.  This way you can create your own.

Let’s provide asylum for Marisol

I’ve written before about the young woman who took over as chief of police in Praxedis G. Guerrero, a town overrun and overcome with the violence resulting from the rivalry of two drug cartels. According to today’s Fort Worth Star Telegram she is now seeking asylum in the U.S. She fled here four months ago after receiving death threats. The seriousness of those threats was born out after an attack last Wednesday on a policewoman who remained behind.

Last March I revised the title of my original October, 2010, post to indicate that Marisol Valles Garcia’s “Guadalupe Presence” was now “gone.” Identifying “virgin qualities” has been a recurring theme of this blog. To unabashedly quote myself:

Virginity is powerful.  In its original concept, it had NOTHING to do with physiology. Being a virgin meant having authority, because a virgin was “author” of her own experience. She carried no labels from any faction. She was defined by no relationship other than the one she maintained with her Creator. She was no one’s daughter, servant, wife, lover, or mother. She was “one-in-herself.” She was whole, complete, un-captured, unbroken, un-invaded, intact.

Revision is a necessity when we place one person on a pedestal and say “SHE” or “HE” is the embodiment of whatever good we’re searching for — and trust that that individual will come up with solutions — will be “the answer” for whatever ails us. Surveying the current field of Republican hopefuls in the States, taking account of the current incumbent, and then doing the same thing for a field of Mexican presidential hopefuls, I am convinced that the days of looking for “a hero,” male or female, are past us. The “pickin’s” are rather sparse in the hero department these days. They seem to be even sparser in the virgin department, whatever variety of virgin you might consider. But enough has been written about that.

Or maybe not. If anything comes out of the constant litany of hero failures and moral shortcomings of elected officials, it may be a heightened longing for virtues lost. In our forty year long “War on Drugs” the U.S. has used practically every violent and subversive means to counteract violent and subversive means — even providing arms to drug cartels. Recriminations on this subject are many, but recriminations only go so far. A practical, positive step toward redeeming our collective “virgin qualities” would be to provide safe harbor for those virtues when someone has tried to live them. Let’s provide asylum for Marisol Valles Garcia.

International Women’s Day — A Big Deal Outside of U.S.

Arriving yesterday morning at our usual Tuesday breakfast gathering I was surprised with several of the Mexican women greeted each other with “Feliz Día Internacional de la Mujeres.” Happy International Women’s Day.  Later Irma, owner of La Casita, the café where we meet, presented each of us a rose with our eggs and papaya. “For Carnival?” I asked. Even at this early hour, the festivities for the last Tuesday before Lent were revving up on the main avenida a block away. Children with masks were running around, and street bands were tuning up. “No, es para las mujeres!” she explained. It seemed perfectly natural to a Canadian friend who arrived in time to claim a flower. “Women’s Day is a really big deal where I come from.”

Well hooray! Seriously. Hooray!

“I don’t remember it being that big a deal in the States, do you?” I asked two friends, as we drove up to Chacala later in the afternoon. We were going to a special event honoring the day. I was speaking, along with two young women who live in Zacualpan, a farming center a few miles inland from the beach communities. One from Guadalajara, another from London, they have started an eco-friendly enterprise using local resources and the talents of women in the village.

“Maybe it’s because women have it easier in the States?” opined the woman in the passenger seat.

“All the more reason to celebrate!” came the response from the backseat.

Here are some links that helped me celebrate yesterday. They are good resources to help honor women every day.

Shelby Knox provided a constant stream of Tweets filled with essential facts about the status of women. You don’t have to have a Twitter account to read these nuggets. They are listed on her blog.

Courtney Martin, thirty-something, redefines feminism for a new generation, and inspires those of us in an older one. Watch her TED talk.

Kay Lindahl is interviewed about  “deep listening,” a practice she likens to playing midwife to birthing another’s thoughts. You’ll want to have a notepad ready when you listen to this.