Got My mtDNA Results!

For my birthday in February my mother gave me a gift of participation in The Genographic Project. This is a landmark study in the human journey being conducted by the National Geographic Society, with funding from other foundations and under the direction of the very attractive (to me) anthropologist and geneticist, Dr. Spencer Wells.

In addition to swabs and vials for you to collect and submit your DNA, the kit comes with a fascinating DVD called The Journey of Man telling about the project and the completed parts of it that have been funded.

I belong to Haplogroup H. From “Eve” in what’s now Ethiopia 150,000 years ago, my ancestors went to the Middle East, to just east of the Black Sea, then from the Black Sea to Western Europe. None passed through Asia, Australia or the Americas (till now).

A Fall into the Drink

This past Sunday Corby and I went out to Kehoe Beach. You have to wade across a narrow part of the lagoon to get from the dunes to the beach, as you may be able to tell in the panorama. It was windy and cool with some high fog. The surf was rough and loud, but the dune grass offered shelter from the winds if you just want to sit and meditate. I had no trouble getting there. On the return walk, however, the mud seemed to give out under me when I first stepped into the water, even though I thought I was being very careful, and down I went into the drink. Pants, T-shirt, sweatshirt, vest, and pack, all soaked. I attempted to break my fall with my right arm by reaching for the dune behind me. It felt like my arm took the full weight of my body because my stiff forearm rammed up into my elbow. It hurt like hel. Corby ran back and helped me up, then back across the water, where we found a log and I sat down in shock while he squeezed water from the looser clothing and fished around in my pack for my camera and phone. Evidently they were deep enough in my pack and I was out of the water fast enough that they didn't get wet. My watch, which also got wet, seems to have survived and still runs.

I didn't much enjoy the walk back was through lush Spring wildflowers, because I was kind of nauseous from shock. I just wanted to get back to the car and take off my wet, sandy, clammy clothes. Fortunately I had a sweater and a small blanket in the car.

Now my arm in quite swollen and hurts a lot. I think it's a sprain. I've iced it and taped it to keep it immobile and taken lots of Ibuprofen. Typing is difficult but not as bad as one might think because my wrist, hand and fingers seem okay. I've had to clumsily feed myself, try to unscrew jars, brush my teeth and comb my hair with my left hand. I can't turn my arm palm up. I can't drive.

And dang! I had to miss my Goddess Grace class tonight. More about that anon.

In the meantime, Happy Solstice to all!

Ms. Deirdre Turns 30

Sunday was a big day in my life and in my daughter's: she turned 30. This is one of the most recent photos I have of her, a playful one from her wedding to Donald on Rodeo Beach in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in October of 2004.

Judy Chicago's 'The Dinner Party'

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, after years in storage, will be moving to its permanent home at the Brooklyn Art Museum this coming March. No notice has been published on the website yet. However, there's a cool replication of Lady Liberty going on for a long-term installation.

Here are two articles about a 2002 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

I had the privilege of viewing the original exhibition at the SF Museum of Art back in 1979 (back when the museum was housed in the SF Civic Center, before the erection of its new digs at Yerba Buena Center). It's breathtaking.

In March, 1979, The Dinner Party premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it attracted record crowds, helped to balance the museum's annual budget and catapulted Judy Chicago into a new level of fame. However, at the same time as people all over the country were clamoring to see The Dinner Party, museums were refusing to exhibit it, even those that had previously committed to shows. At the end of its first 'triumphant' exhibition, The Dinner Party went into storage, Judy Chicago went into shock and the many people involved in The Dinner Party studio scattered.

I have no doubt it will continue to have a great emotional impact upon viewers lo this quarter century later, even though women's rights have advanced much since then. I intend to make a pilgrimage.

Thanks to my friend Amy Luna Manderino for this tip.

Raven

This is a photo of a very young, and still healthy, Raven Moonshadow after the Spiral Dance at the SF Women's Building in 1982. He's standing in front of the "soul tree" (hung with clay skulls of various sizes made by sculptor Eleanor Myers (not visible in this shot)) wearing Moira's crow headdress that I'd worn during the ritual that night, and for some unknown reason of his own holding his teddy bear. This was the year after Gwydion Pendderwen passed. Sadly, the photographer, Ken Willard, is also on the other side of the veil with Raven and Gwydion.

Saturday at McClure's Beach

Corby and I spent Saturday afternoon at McClure's Beach on the Point Reyes Peninsula, a piece of land to the west of the San Andreas Fault. I find this place incredibly restorative. I bring no notebook, no sketchpad, this time only a camera. Mostly I just sit there and watch the waves or walk along the strand letting the ninth waves wash over my feet. You can see what a busy place it is, simply teeming with people everywhere.

The little girl is playing on the rocks while Corby is climbing around on the other side taking photos of tidepools.

(Forgive the klutziness of this layout. I'm only just beginning to learn the mysteries of composing a page with photos on it. It's been frustrating. I'm lucky to have gotten this far.)

More on Dalai Lama

Although I have more reflections about this event to share, in the meantime this came from the organizers:

On April 15, 2006, His Holiness the Dalai Lama traveled to San Francisco to attend an historic event, embracing his Muslim brothers and sisters, as well as other world faiths, to foster mutual understanding and to celebrate our common humanity.

We have finally been able to post the photographs that were taken at the event. ... Please click on the link here ... to review and purchase photographs, additional pins, and to join further discussion about the event. ...

At a time when the world is experiencing and witnessing more suffering and rising tensions between faiths, it was the goal of this gathering to promote open discourse about our commonalities centered on dignity, respect, love, and compassion. As a result of the event, over 200 publications and 50 news stations around the world covered the event. Each of us, our families, friends, communities and faith-groups, are talking, thinking about, and acting with more tolerance, care and compassion.

This event was the first step of many to gather with one voice representing the overwhelming majority of people of faith who live moderate and normative lives of service, mercy, and compassion. The goal: a world without violence, respectful of diversity. This gathering demonstrated to the world that a calm dialogue between a broad cross section of Muslim and other scholars and religious, community, and business leaders highlights the ideals and precepts of each faith that speak from the center of the heart and resonate through all faiths.

To each and every one who attended, supported and assisted with the event, we thank you from our hearts.

Fifty news stations and 200 publications, wow! I knew there were a lot there but this is way more than I realized.

I checked out the photos and found none that show Don, Patrick, Barbara or me. Photos of the pre-gathering panels begin around #364. (You can sort of see the backs of our heads in some of them. We were in the third row, to the left in those photos.) We were told absolutely no cameras, at least not for us guests. We complied. I still feel good about this all these six weeks later.

Shadowfax Is Gone

When our dear Raven moved into Maitri Hospice care, he needed people to adopt his pets. Two of them were his familiars, black cats named Shadowfax and Lilith Nightmare. He wanted his little kitties to stay together. They came to live with us in February or March of 1996.

At the time we adopted them we tried to get as much info about them from Raven as we could. He said Lilith was 5 and Shadow was 10. Neither seemed that old. We do know that they were adult cats, probably at least 3 or 4 years old. It also quickly became clear to us when they came into heat for the first time with us that they were the lesbians Raven said they were. However, our circumstances and our conscience dictated that they be spayed, after which they took no sexual interest in one another. They occasionally licked each other’s nose, more frequently harassed each other, particularly around mealtimes.

We sometimes call Lilith our little Sicilian cat for her muscular build and short glossy hair. She likes to roll in the dust and sleep in the sunshine. She’s the mascot of our condo complex, greeting everyone who comes up the driveway with a croaking sort of sound, wreathing their legs and soliciting attention.

Shadow, OTOH, was an elfin cat, with very fine, long, fluffy fur, very delicate of build, light, relaxed, a real lap cat who generally preferred male laps but would happily drape herself across a female if one sat down. Much shyer than Lilith, she preferred to stay closer to home and shade more than sun, indoors or outdoors depending on where her humans were, especially Corby.

Sometime over the years Lilith’s eye was damaged, in a fight, we think. Her left eye is dead now yet she seems generally comfortable. She’s too old to have it surgically removed, not to mention the cost. There may come a time when we’ll need to give her some pain medication as the eye gets worse. In the meantime, she’s a happy geriatric cat.

Not so with Shadow. She developed tumors on her teats. We monitored them and took her to the vet periodically for his opinion. They were not going to go away. He said they’d probably eventually grow into her organs and kill her, but again, she was old and somewhat frail so surgery was not an option. During the last few months we treated her with expensive oral antibiotics to retard the rotting of her flesh (and accompanying disgusting smell of rotting flesh). The antibiotics didn’t work so well after a while; we used a stronger one. We bathed her tumors in pau d’arco tea in hopes that would help retard their growth, or at least keep her relatively clean.

When I was away at Dandelion Gathering she took off and didn’t return for a few days. Corby had assumed she’d gone off to die. Then about three nights later she returned and curled up in the flower bed outside our kitchen window, but didn’t want to come in. She ate a bite or two of chicken out of Corby’s hand, and she purred for a few seconds when petted. She seemed generally responsive but very weak. Her breathing was labored. She disappeared in the morning and returned in the evening for a few more days.

During these last two weeks we phoned several house-call vets, emergency vet clinics, and her regular doctor inquiring about euthanasia. Even to take her into emergency the price we were given was $185. We kept in touch with the doctors but never made a firm appointment. We were conflicted, since she seemed to be passing in a manner of her own choice.

Then one evening she came indoors. I kept her indoors so we could monitor her better, even though she seemed to want to leave. She managed to get upstairs and rest under our bed for a few more days. She didn’t come out. She purred a bit when we reached under to talk with her and pet her. She got skinnier and skinnier and her coat lost its lustre. This Tuesday evening she came downstairs and wanted out. We let her. She’d walk a few feet and then lie down breathing hard. She managed to get herself down the steep, shady, leaf-strewn hillside where there was no human traffic and settle herself under some boards. Corby followed her. He went down to see how she was a couple of times that night and again in the morning.

On Wednesday we took her to the Marin Humane Society -- wonderful people! She resisted, the poor sweet thing, but she was so weak and so miserable we thought it best to give her deliverance. With her last little bit of energy, she bit on the lip the woman who’d been whispering in her ear to soothe and comfort her as she went.

She was a sweet, dear kitty, loving and much loved in return. Our lives were enriched by having her live with us these past ten years. We’ll miss her. In love may she return again.

Birth & Death

Just back from a really great time in Western Massachusetts helping to birth BIRCH.

The bad news is that our little Miss Shadowfax, one of the late Raven Moonshadow's kitties, has gone off to die. (Photo is of Raven and me at a Spiral Dance back in the early '90s, I think; he crossed over in 1996.)

More when I catch my breath.

Berkeley Pagan Festival

Lovely day, all in all. Others have written more extensively, both my friends new Keeper of the Light Anne Hill and altar-builder Victoria Slind-Flor. Here's what the latter sent me. She captioned it, "Macha NightNare attempts to attack Anne Hill with keeper of Light Staff: joi wolfwomyn prays for Anne's deliverance." Many more cool photos: Jason Robinson's here and Greg Harder's here.

Corby and I took off as soon as we decently could and headed on over to the local Pagan wedding of the decade, that of Reclaiming Witches Kala and Dress. The bride was stunning in purple, the groom in bridal white, complete with fingerless elbow gloves and delicate veil. Both were as happy as I've ever seen them. Love of every kind was in the air midst the redwoods, firs and oaks of hilly Joaquin Miller Park. There were about 20 in the wedding party, about 300 guests, lots of live entertainment, a 1-hour, 20-minute ceremony followed by a 45-minute spiral dance. We missed the ritual, but arrived in time for entertainment, food, toasts, and plenty of schmoozing at the purple-clothed, Spring flower-bedecked, deity-named tables.

Conjuring Summer In

My Pagan friends have done a splendid job conjuring Summer in. What an utterly gorgeous May Day!

Corby and I danced the Maypole at Anne Hill's new place in Bodega Bay on Saturday. Great crowd, great weather, great music, beautiful brand new pole. But unfortunately Saturday night I was overcome with a mysterious illness. I spent Sunday just lying around, with aching intercostals, abs, hips (the bones) and head -- well, really, all of me -- reading the Sunday paper. So for only the second time in maybe 20 years I missed singing up the Sun with the Berkeley Morris Dancers at Inspiration Point in Tilden Park. The last time I missed I'd undergone a hysterectomy the day before so obviously wasn't up and about. Corby went anyway that time. Today he decided not to.

Early this morning Val and Tom Lux phoned, wondering why we weren't there, so I'm reassured that our pals really missed us. They were on their way to Vicki Solomon's house, our rendezvous place for breakfast in recent years.

Today, instead of marching for immigrants' rights, I scrambled to find health insurance. The costs are ridiculously high, and the parameters for an older woman like myself are even worse. Spent time at Kaiser Member Services and on the Web looking for something that will work for me and that I can afford. A discouraging process.

It reached 81º F. in lovely San Rafael today. After seemingly endless rains, Summer is icumen in.

Intermission

Just had a really fun gig tonight at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, thanks to Kate Wolf-Pizor. Spoke to 20 MA and PhD students about Craft and did a brief ritual featuring a spiral dance in honor of the lovely Inanna, the morning and the evening star, wearer of the shugurra crown, possessor of the 10,000 me. We agreed the Fertile Crescent, land of Inanna, needs Her influence now. We sang Barge of Heaven, such a beautiful song, with drum accompaniment.

It's so validating to talk to erudite people about something they're interested in that you know a lot about and love to talk about! I barely scratched the surface, could have gone on for hours. And I love it when I get intelligent, challenging questions during the discussion. One tonight was about the existence and purpose of sacred prostitutes.

Pre-Gathering Workshops - 4

As someone brought up as a Christian (both Methodist by my mother and my maternal relatives and Roman Catholic by my father and my paternal relatives), I've often been put-off by what I see as extreme arrogance in terms of expressing opinions and facts and the final word on any given subject. So it was with delight that I heard the words of the the Very Rev. Alan Jones, dean of nearby Grace Cathedral, when he called for (on the part of religious leaders, I would assume, not necessarily onlyl Christians) "epistemological humility." How refreshing! He said that instead of pronouncing what's right or wrong about such things as stem cell research, what's ethical or unethical, "we" should admit that this is a matter we need to take some time to think about. He invoked the image of the madonna and child as showing an infant god who cannot speak, who is pre-verbal. I was pleased to hear him speak of this image, since it's so central to many Pagan paths -- only it's more the mother than the son who's revered. Jones said we need to "get away from crippling certainty."

Pre-Gathering Workshops - 3

Continuing to address the question "What Has Caused Abandonment of the Center in the Faith Traditions?" Professor Sherman Jackson , an African-American convert to Islam (as were other American-born presenters), asserted that ignorance is easy to fix if a person is sincere and willing to learn. He believes that insecurity breeds fundamentalism, that fundamentalism exists among those who won't accept knowledge. This leads to arrogance. If a religious tradition doesn't speak to the reality of people's lives, they will look elsewhere. I agree with him, and I also believe that this is among the reasons why some turn to NeoPagan religious paths -- because many find these adaptable paths to be more relevant to the lives we are actually living in this 21st century PoPoMo world.

Jack Kornfield , a Vipassana teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, near where I live, was unable to attend because he was attending a retreat but he kindly sent a brief statement addressing the question.

Speaker Rabbi Jane Litman is another local person from Congregation Beth El in Berkeley. I've chatted with her, her husband and family several times over the years at social functions at our mutual friend Irene's house. I was glad to see she was on the program.

Dr. Shabbir Mansuri from India, founding director of the Council on Islamic Education, also spoke.

Phil Cousineau claimed that the urge to proselytize comes from fear and that ignorance creates terrorism. You can see a theme developing here, one with which I've always agreed: fear, ignorance, "us-them" mindset. Phil also made a case for people making religious pilgrimages, or just traveling, getting to know other peoples, other customs, and other ways of living. He apprised us this startling fact -- to me at least: the travel industry is now the largest industry in the world, surpassing even the armaments industry. Great news, sez I.

More another night.

Not about the Dalai Lama

Just received word that my friend Judy Harrow, as a member of the Religious Leadership Council of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, has written a fine essay presenting a Pagan ethical approach to reproductive choice here. Congratulations to Judy!

Pre-Gathering Workshops - 2

To the question, "What Has Caused Abandonment of the Center in the Faith Traditions?" Dr. Alan Godlas asserted that Buddhists and Muslims share a common desire to see the goodness of human nature; that they share the qualities of patience, tolerance, compassion, wisdom, and taking refuge; compassionate awareness of the tragedies that befall the human race and a desire to transform them for the better; and that they use all available energies, including the negative, to bring about transformation for the better.

Co-chair Dr. Barbara von Schlegell spoke of the story of Hagar and how the sharing of water and the marriage of her son Ismael to an Arab brought the two worlds of Jews and Arabs together. She claimed that Islam was the religion of outsiders, demonized by the mainstream. (We Pagans could probably tell her a thing or two about being demonized.) She alluded to a sympathetic Muslim character on the television program "Lost," a referenced that puzzled most listeners there because they'd never seen the program. She claimed that personal relationships are the best way to demystify the "other" and change from us-and-them to simply us.

I have espoused this same idea for Witches for many years. We tend to fear the unknown, and when the unknown becomes familiar, fear disappears. This concept came up again and again in various ways over the course of the afternoon.

Dr. Maryam Sharief, dressed in black-and-white printed swaths of fabric round her head and body, is Sudan-born and reared and Oxford-educated. A mellifluent-voiced woman who'd traveled all the way from Cairo for this event, Dr. Sharief said that extremism reflects a state of the soul rather than religious thought. . She claimed that people have to earn their faith by raising their consciousness. Further, she said that extremism comes from modern consciousness, that modern educated people have lost their religous identity. I can agree with that only to a degree, not entirely.

Master Hang Truong, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and founder of the Compassionate Service Society, said that Buddhists shun extremism. He observed that exclusivity in daily life fosters extremism, and that change must occur deep within the individual and then love must be put out into the world. Sounds good to me.

Professor John Alden Williams, bearer of two distinguished American names, now retired, has traveled and studied throughout the world. He insisted that we need to make our principals live and real. I heartily agree.

Tekaroniamekan Jake Swamp, sub-chief of he Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, spoke of three important principles: first, teaching humans to allow peace to come into their bodies, to feel good about themselves; second, when inner peace is achieved it emits from each person to others; and third, the power of a good mind, of working with heart. This last, power of a good mind, seems similar to Starhawk's concept of power-from-within. Chief Swamp maintained that in whatever we do we must always be thinking of the children, of the following seven generations.

Well, that's about half of one session and it will have to do for now.

Three Pre-Gathering Workshops - 1

There were three workshops -- in reality they were panels -- preceding the main gathering. The first session addressed the question: "What Has Caused Abandonment of the Center in Faith Traditions?"

The format was to have two chairs and 12 speakers on each topic, each speaker being given three minutes. Need I say that this didn't turn out to be a very workable format? First of all, the questions each panelist was asked to address were too complex to even begin to answer in only three minutes. Second, academics are accustomed to loquaciousness. So, of course, some of the speakers had to be asked to conclude their remarks before they were done, while those who were succinct seemed to have to rush to say all they wanted to say. A shame, really, because most of them had lots of thought-provoking and inspiring things to say. Ah, well.

Don took copious notes so I know he'll be writing up a more detailed synopsis than I. We'll compare our notes and probably fill in some gaps before final publication in CoG's interfaith report -- Don is the official interfaith representative from the Covenant of the Goddess -- but in the meantime I'll be recreating some of what I took away from the presentations, some of the thoughts their words generated in my mind, but mostly impressions. This isn't intended to be a detailed report.

Most of the panelists were Buddhists and Muslims, and, as you might imagine, most were male. All were stunningly knowledgeable and accomplished. There were a few Jews and Christians, one Native American and one Hindu nun from the Vedanta Society. They came from all over the world, with a concentration drawn from California. The majority seemed to be on the Abrahamic religions, not surprising, since most Westerners follow one of the three big Abrahamic paths. I imagine there were fewer Christians because this was taking place on Good Friday.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the American-born or -reared speakers spoke in much louder voices than those from other countries. Two in particular wouldn't have needed a mike, except that the talks were being filmed and recorded, and one, the amazing Huston Smith, could have filled an auditorium with his voice.

Now that I've explained the general set-up and personnel, I'll return another time to speak in greater detail about what they had to say.

Pre-Pre-Gathering

I lived in San Francisco for 20 years, the last 10 of which were in North Beach. Meaning I had plenty of occasion to take the Powell Street cable car to work and school. The main intersection of the three extant cable car lines is at Powell and California Street, just one block down from Number One Nob Hill, address of the Mark Hopkins Hotel (now likely conglomerated, it would seem by its new name, which adds the word Intercontinental to its title). In my 20's I'd occasionally go to the Top of the Mark (opened in 1939) for drinks and the spectacular view of the city it affords.

When I arrived around 11 am Friday morning for a 2 pm pre-gathering workshop, I entered the bustling lobby of the Mark to see a woman with long pale hair approaching from the area of the registration desk. She seemed to be looking at me, so I asked her if she was Nancy D. Nancy is the person my colleague Oak referred to me when the possibility of having a NeoPagan presence on the guest list. Thinking I should probably ask this greeter if she knew where I might find Nancy, instead I simply blurted out, "Are you Nancy D.?" She said, "Yes. Are you Macha?" What a relief!

In spite of appearances to the contrary, I'm a shy person. I'm comfortable conversing once I'm introduced to someone, and sometimes I try to strike up conversations with others sharing a common experience or common quarters (bus ride, plane seat, long line waiting to get in somewhere), but basically I find coming to mingle with people I'd assumed to be a distinguished crowd I find challenging. So when Nancy herself escorted me to the registration room and introduced me to her son, who was registering those whose last names began with N, O and P, I felt much more comfortable being there.

Nancy told me that the people who work on these international religious events are used to people having different names on their name tags or registration than on their passports and driver's licenses. That is the case with me.

The registration tag was printed with the logo of the event, a mingling of the Buddhist eternal knot and what I take to be some Arabic scripture. Very cool. We also received a red-and-gold tack-type button of the logo, which I intend to wear with pride.

Nancy suggested I go up to the hospitality room up on the mezzanine level for coffee while I waited. The room to which I was directed seemed abandoned. The tables contained the remains of some snacks and empty coffee carafes. A young couple from Southern California came into the room for the same reason I had. So we phoned housekeeping and asked for help. When the man from housekeeping arrived, he told us there was nothing scheduled in that room at that hour and that if there was a hospitality room for us, it was somewhere else and he didn't know where. Odd. The couple, Robert and Jojo, and I had been chatting while we'd been waiting. I'd told them a bit about Cherry Hill Seminary and NeoPaganism in general, and it happened that Jojo had never even heard of Wiccans. ???

The three of us returned to the lobby, where various people were having comestibles. We sat at a table and asked for someone to bring us coffee. Meanwhile, Don strolled into the lobby and I waved to him. After he registered, he came to sit and wait with us. Soon Patrick and Amadae arrived and joined us.

At about 1:30 we went up to the afternoon program in the Six Continents Room to be sure we had good seats.

His Holiness Enters

I came away from the afternoon session with HH yesterday feeling pretty blissed, I must say. I had no direct contact with His Holiness. He entered slowly, coming down the aisle from the rear of two rooms (the Peacock Court, a ballroom where the event was held, and an overflow room to the rear).

Patrick by some magic managed to talk his way into getting seats in the blue section many rows forward of Don and me. There were dignitaries on the stage, sponsors and honored guests in a red section up front, important people -- I guess they were considered important for some reason -- behind the reds in the blue section, and then unassigned general seating at the back. There were only three rows of general seating at the very back of the ballroom before the overflow room. Don and I sat in the second, making is in the next-to-last row in the room, meaning quite far from the focus of the day. The good part was that I sat on the aisle, so when HH came in he passed me at about two feet away.

He was surrounded by monks and Secret Service. In fact, we'd each been searched and had one of those wands passed over us by the SS as we entered. I was on the left; HH was facing right, extending his right hand to people on the opposite side of the aisle. Remembering what Michael York had told me about touching his foot, I tentatively reached out my hand just to see what would happen. I ended up gently brushing the hand of a SS bodyguard. I'm guessing he may have picked up some nice vibes from me in the interchange. LOL

Anyyway, it was a very low-key way for HH to have entered. Of course, the poor fellow who'd been addressing the audience when HH arrived had to stop talking and resume again after HH had been seated.

More anon.

Sacredness

Last Thursday I wrote this to a few friends. In response, my Quagan friend Wiccazoid Cat reminds me how neglected this blog is. So pretend this is from April 13. More to come when I've had more chance to digest the weekend's events

I met a woman in the Tibetan Culture House today when I went there to buy two white scarves (one for Patrick, who’s been traveling all over the state to prisons all week and probably won’t have a chance to get one) to present to His Holiness. We had a great conversation while Corby chatted with the precocious 13-year-old poet who’d been talking incessantly with her. The woman, Jo, who was maybe 70 and quite lively, had encountered HH at Spirit Rock in 2000. She also knows Arjia Rinpoche, the lama in Mill Valley on whose asylum papers I worked. There was a photo of him near the register. The store itself is owned by a short, tubby brown Tibetan former monk (Jo’s description) who left and married a much younger woman and now has a little baby. Apparently he knows the Dalai Lama well. He went to see him at some event a few years ago and kind of hid in the back of the crowded room. HH spotted him and walked through the crowd over to him and embraced him. He had thought he wouldn’t been in good graces because he’d left and married, but HH told him that he shouldn’t let all his teachings go to waste and that he should teach. Pretty cool, huh?

Jo gave me some barley seeds with some kind of orange pollen on them (maybe saffron?) that HH had given her back in 2K when she’d met him when he visited Spirit Rock and asked me to give some of them back to him, with this blessing:

“May peace and prosperity, love and compassion just pour into your life.
Don’t envy anyone.
If someone is critical of you, you don’t have to listen to that!
Just remember, you are a precious jewel.”

He said these exact words to her then and she’s passed them on to others since then, including me. So I have the seeds and a scarf. She said he’ll probably take my hand at the very least, but more likely will touch foreheads for a few seconds. She says his presence is amazing -- gentle, calm and shining.

She said she knew HH was here this weekend because her employer, the former monk store owner, told her. He’s always asked to participate when HH visits. He told her he couldn’t say anything about the event. I told her that was true. She asked me how I happened to be invited and I told her that religious leaders were invited and that I was a Pagan. She’s not Buddhist herself, as it happens. The topic of interviews somehow came up, and Corby piped up that I was a religious leader (LOL) and that I was often interviewed. A bit of an exaggeration, I must say. In any case, I said, well, yes, I was featured on the cover of the Pacific Sun the week of Halloween, and she said, “Oh, that was you? I read that.”

She says this little Tibetan store owner is a real “babe magnet,”and that in general HH and all the monks are fascinated by women. That’s cool, sez I. ;-)

Namaste!
Macha

P.S. Don’t worry, I’m always gonna be a Pagan.