The road to nakedness

My recent attendance at some of the online interviews and discussions at the Collective Trauma Summit taught me a new vocabulary to comprehend trauma on a variety of levels. Above all, it made me realise that I am far from alone in my attitudes towards grief, the environment, and war.

A dominant theme that was articulated repeatedly was that we need to learn to feel each other at an emotional level, in order to create and sustain a lived awareness of interconnectivity with one another, all life on earth, and, indeed, the cosmos. For, life, when it is hurt, is cold, distant, and repetitive in endless hamster-wheeling cycles. And who wants that?

The conversation between summit organiser Thomas Hübl and climate grief expert Britt Wray confirmed that humans, both individually and collectively, frequently cling to a refusal or an inability to "digest life" as Hübl put it. Covid, for example, was a collective trauma which we did not digest fully, either at the time or since, and, as such, it was a "lost opportunity for harvesting learning". The avoidance of distress manifests as an inability to honour, let alone deal with and channel it, and is a mark of emotional immaturity that resists natural change, growth and transformation.

So, an overarching question is: How can we channel distress into care and action? The more aware we are of any distress we feel, and the more tools we summon to help us channel this distress, the freer we become to "release our burdens" and to choose to lead our selves from one present moment to the next.

As Hübl said several times during the summit, "Trauma is the inability to be present". Closely related is his profound statement: "Presence does not have an other". 

Hübl emphasised that each individual who practises self-leadership, and who has the tools to regulate their own nervous system, has a healing impact on the collective, even if that impact may not be obvious to themselves or others. This was corroborated by bestselling author Gabby Bernstein, who shared how she "wrote herself back into life" after her soul (her unconscious) made it impossible for her not to face the trauma, and its cloaking by shame, of sexual violation. She highlighted the fact that healing takes place "one person at a time".

My personal favourite session was the conversation between Hübl and Prentis Hemphill on 'The Transformative Power of Vulnerability', where 'power' was redefined as:

... openness: Can I be soft enough to listen to what is asked in any particular moment? When I receive you in myself, and our combined agency, power is the creation emerging between us. When both are willing to be fluid, ego steps back.

Hemphill issued the wish that she would want to it to become commonplace for humans to "help one another to shine". Again, the topic of discomfort came up, and that our capacity to be in the discomfort of the world, with all the pain it brings, equals our capacity to grow into our own ability to 'shine'.

"When I let the pain do its work, something changes in me," Hemphill, or Hübl, said. My notes do not indicate which one of these two remarkable people actually uttered those words in that moment, nor would either of them need to claim the quote for themselves, as both live it, have learned to engage with the process of working patiently with pain, whether individual, ancestral or collective, and to trust what emerges from it.

"Kindness at the heart of human beings is the medicine that brings us back home." This quotable quote emerged during the conversation between Kosha Joubert, CEO of the Pocket Project, and somatic practitioner Linda Thai, which touched on multiple levels of trauma, ranging from war (which Thai called "an over-exposure to death"), refugee experiences, the transgressive dissociation from nature (for example, when ancestral land is turned into property), to vicarious trauma due to "hyper-attunement" to the other - which can cause collapse of the self, flipping into existential nihilism or hopelessness. 

One talk I attended, with such hunger that I did not take any notes I can quote or refer to now, was the discussion between the two co-directors of Combatants for Peace, Rana Salman and Eszter Koranyi. Their revelations came as a trauma relief mission to me personally, as the two women represent an organisation that speaks my language and my own heart's truths, namely: There is another way.

I have been near to hopelessness in regard to the war in Gaza, having seen friendships break up around me because of it. In the fray of that I remember saying:

I stand for no flag, I stand for the naked human body. Between Israel and Palestine there lies this form in the sand, and I see it clear as clear with my mind's eye: a naked human body. Who will pick up that body and rescue it from the madness of violence?

After attending the Collective Trauma Summit, I see that this body is being held and nurtured, not only by Combatants for Peace, but by all who refuse a language of othering, who refuse a violating, blaming language, and choose, instead, a creative, courageous language: There is another way. That way does not avoid pain, it does not avoid discomfort, it does not avoid trauma, but faces them all, and chooses to grieve together with 'the other', to hear the other, to see the other, and so to heal the Self.

Then, life itself becomes a poem, becomes attuned to what we could call the poetry of being, and begins to sing.

The creative way

 

The cross

It was at one of John Homewood's talks that I first encountered the figure of the cross as a living articulation between our breath and time itself. 

The timeline of our lives creates the horizontal axis of the cross, made up – if you jot down the events of your life – of the buzz and chaos, with its joys and trials, of every human’s count of days on earth. 

When I inspect my own timeline, I have to admit that it’s a pretty ragged thread of sorrows and misfortunes. Until recently, I was embarrassed by the fact that, in terms of actual incidents, my life seems to be peppered by what most of us would, I guess, call misfortune, bad luck and sorrow. I’ve lost that embarrassment as a result of chronologically listing the basic events of my circumstances, and then reflecting on what endures, as follows. 

During a materially comfortable childhood, I witnessed harsh human dissent and loss of self-control as a given.

My family moved to South Africa, where we lived literally on the edge of a military zone called Voortrekkerhoogte (now Thaba Tshwane). The State at that time promoted and defended racist practices by policy, causing my father to declare that he would be quite content if my sisters and I failed Afrikaans at school – that seemed to be the way he felt he could best contribute to the anti-Apartheid struggle. Friends and boyfriends were conscripted and suffered abuse and violence on all levels.

I left home, and experienced armed soldiers searching my room, friends being sjambokked by police, a pregnant lecturer imprisoned without trial. I taught in violent townships, and in tiny sanctuary spaces offered to township children. I lost my sanity, benefited from the balm of therapy.

Mandela was released and the New South Africa came into being.

I married and experienced the gift of motherhood. My husband and I were economically on the margins, however, to save money I did not eat properly, suffered from overwork, broke down and succumbed again to mental illness, from which, again, I managed to recover. My husband was unwilling to continue the marriage and eventually we divorced.

My second marriage gave me deep spiritual fulfilment, my husband and I published many poetry books together, but he was frail, his failing health was ever a shadow over us. Economic pressure was a constant, he carried much debt.

Then my fit, nimble mother suffered a stroke and was consigned to total physical helplessness. My sister lost her sanity, and my beloved husband died.

I published two poetry books solo.

I was required to sell my late husband's house and leave the village that had become my home. At the same time, Trump was making headlines with his tweets.

I was lucky in love and did not have to move alone. Within weeks of our move, Covid and hard lockdown razed human lives and economies. I lost work and marketing opportunities for my new book. Friends and family fell ill.

My father’s memory began to fail and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, requiring me to run my parents’ household and take responsibility for their daily needs and overall care.

War continued to ruin the beauty of the Middle East.

My sister is currently in a mental institution and I am praying constantly for her. My Beloved’s heart has urged him to leave me for crucial time to himself – whether temporarily or forever is uncertain.

Russia has invaded Ukraine and I hear alternatingly tragic and hopeful details of the victims from friends who have connections there.

So much for the horizontal axis of my personal cross in a broad sweep – living such a timeline is great training in patience, I’ll say that much. And patience – please consider this carefully – does not mean simply waiting for undesirable situations to pass. Patience is the active (gracious) carrying of an unwanted load towards its end. It’s notable that, except for love and marriage, motherhood, the recovery from my illnesses, and the activities of teaching and poetry publishing, none of the other events on my timeline were chosen by me! I couldn’t have asked for a better, or harder, school than this life to teach me a little graciousness.

I wonder, if you were to make a list of events on YOUR timeline, what the ratio of chosen to unchosen would be. How would you rate YOUR ability to carry unwanted burdens?

♥

Now for the vertical axis – the one, which, I recall John Homewood observing, you plumb when you stop focusing on the “school”, that milling chaos called ‘the wheel of life’. I tried to outline it in poem form –

The vertical axis of my cross

is prayer, my heart –

vessel of joy,

 

my pen standing up

for me in spite of trouble,

noting my small noticings –

 

fine sword of God, ensuring anchorage

in places

of peace.

 

Thus, I write

of deer, of dew, of weather and birds –

they are my breath,

 

preserving me, wrapped

in Christ’s playful smile,

on my cross.

 ♥

The loveliest insight, for me, which the above reflections yield is that my chosen, voluntary WORK – my writing (published and unpublished) and my visual art – by and large expresses not the vicissitudes of my timeline, but the spiritual anchor of my self in the vertical axis. I realise that my life’s work, mainly my artistic output, has never not been first and foremost a spiritual path and practice.

All of what I have done and continue to do is subordinate to the naked flame that has steadily been alchemising my soul beyond the edge of time. 

♥ 

As for you – I’d be curious to hear where you feel the ‘vertical axis’ on your cross breathes most freely.

 ♥

The fragrant ground and I

If you want to live happily ever after - and whatever place or realm (on or off earth) you finally (or not so finally) end up in, presumably you do want that - it is a good idea to stop at times, turn around and take in the view presented by your life thus far.

I bet you it's an amazing landscape, which you may be glad not to have to traipse through again, but which you're justifiably really proud of having got through. I mean: look at those cliffs of conflict between yourself and others; curious wetlands, alternating with high-lying plateaux, of love, relationships and friendships; deserts and forests you survived of classes, courses, exams, jobs, all kinds of duties; rapids of ill-health; oceans of grief; lakes and waterfalls of indolence and fun; fruiting orchards of joy ...

If you keep looking, you'll be bragging before long about all your adventures and tests of endurance and how often you definitely had enough, but, somehow, here you still are. So claim your title: top topographer, flagbearer, first explorer! Which you are: since none of us have ANY competition when it comes to our own life paths. We're once-offs, forever.

Each month I create a new cover for my Facebook Page, Give Your Writing The Edge, whereby I aim to project a concern or feel for the weeks ahead. Often, I allow my choice to be intuitive, but this month, both the picture as well as the poetry were a leap into the unknown as never before. I chose two poems, separated by more than 35 years (which is currently 63% of my life) - poems, which speak mysteries to one another.

I authored it, and can recite it on the spot, but I have never understood the first poem, Dog. However, a dear old friend, who has always favoured it, reminded me of it recently. Not only did that inspire the second poem, but also a new curiosity: what on earth (on earth indeed) was the language doing with me? 

I aproach the poem like any reader, tip-toeing carefully towards possible meanings. 

The houndedness of the faceless, fallen rose connects it, of course, to the dog - who doesn't even dig, so opposed is it: it "nibbles (nibbles!) own spaces in the ground" where nothing is wanted. The scene is tragic, a picture of perfect disempowerment, an apparently necessary secreting away of natural is-ness. The treasured symbol of love is nothing but an old bone.

The second poem launches on that connection between the rose and the bone and it turns out that not only has the flower survived, but it has multiplied subterraneously over three and a half decades. 

"in the ground" becomes, in Dog 2, 'under the skin', deep inside the tissues: the identification of rose and bone has built a structure, which not only has an I, but an unopposed, fearless, fragrant (!) inner body that can speak and declare its old ("after all these years") aliveness.

Whence comes this sudden up out of the adult marrow?

Certainly the identification between the "ground" (where roses and bones are buried) and the "I" (where years and sorrow have been buried) is a powerful place to begin. And end.

Photo: Detail from a picture I took of my potted peace rose. 

Out of the crucible of pain

Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso

There is perhaps nothing on earth more compelling, impermanent, nor more faithful, than pain.
Pain is your most jealous lover.
He wants ALL your attention. He wants your eyes on nothing and no one but himself.
You are mesmerised into your weakest aspects by pain.
This imprisonment applies to all parts of our incarnated self: whether the pain inhabits your body, heart, mind or soul, his power is the same.

It takes great equanimity and faith to slip your nearly suffocated flame out and away from the arms of Pain.
You see yourself embraced by and embracing him.
Your detachment offers opportunity.

"Pain," you say, "What do you want from me?"
"Ah," he replies, "I want you to FEEL me."

So you feel him. You feel his neediness of your anguish and agony, how hungrily he devours the time you give him.
You begin to realise that you are feeding him.
Like a vulture, he is gorging himself on the carcass of what is already past in you.
You feel him sating himself.

The more he eats, the brighter your flame burns.
"You are looking beautiful!" people exclaim.
They like the radiance of your suffering, your brave patience.

Gradually, your unwanted lover quietens and drowses to sleep.
You are exhausted, but free.
You are light and new and can combine a limp, spent body-mind-soul with your flame again.
You are fragile, but you are also energised and newly whole.

Ascension depends on crucifixion, but your flame keeps its joy quiet.

Until, at length, it flickers and sways and fetches fresh oxygen to bring the world your eternal smile: an alchemy out of the crucible of pain.

- Silke Heiss, 7th June 2019