mythology – Lion's Whiskers

Disobedience

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

One of the members of our church choir is a dedicated peace activist who has been arrested more than once for her protest work; from time to time she reports on the status of charges against her. When my daughter first understood that this woman had been put in jail because of her beliefs, she was intrigued. This led to a discussion about democracy and civil disobedience, and to the stories of the Civil Rights Movement. The stories about Rosa Parks and Dr. King have become part of American mythology, and I was proud to tell her some of those stories.

I quickly found myself in rather deep water, however, since explaining the background of the struggle required discussing racism and its destructive manifestation in our history of African slavery. Imagine the squirming I suffered inside as I (a white woman) explained to my newly-adopted Ethiopian daughter how white people went to Africa to steal black people and bring them here against their will, their heritage stripped from them. The growing look of baffled alarm on my daughter’s face finally resolved itself into a gut punch of a question. “Am I your slave?”

How else could it look to her, after all? She had had no choice in the matter of her adoption and emigration to the U.S. When I regained my composure I tried to point out the many differences, all the while knowing in the back of my mind that, in truth, children are as powerless to control their fates as the captured Africans were.

All I could offer was the promise that I would never force her to do anything against her will or raise a hand against her, that I would protect her from harm, and that I would show up on time. From that moment my job was clarified for me: I had to parent through moral authority alone, by earning her love, respect and trust through my own actions. Anything else would be tyranny. If parents must be dictators at times, they must at least be benevolent dictators.

Besides, the cat is out of the bag as far as resistance to unjust civil authority is concerned! I’ve shared with her the courage stories of civil disobedience, and encouraged her to think of resistance to tyranny and injustice as a good and important thing, a hero’s quest if ever there was one. I have, in effect, put myself on notice.

If I ever have to post bail for her for an act of conscience, I will be proud to stand up in church and make that announcement. I think that will tell me I did my job well.

Four Dragons

admin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In the West, we frequently use dragons as a metaphor for evils, wrongs, or unnamed fears that must be conquered. In China, however, dragons are benevolent. Powerful, yes, but benevolent. One beautiful legend from ancient China speaks of the Four Dragons: Black Dragon, Yellow Dragon, Long Dragon and Pearl Dragon. Here it is, as I retold it to my daughter:

A very long time ago, there were no rivers in China. No lakes, no ponds, no streams or springs or waterfalls, either. There was only the great ocean in the east. Fortunately, the land was watered by rain, sent by the Jade Emperor, who ruled in Heaven. A time came, however, when the Jade Emperor stopped paying attention to the earth, and forgot to send the rains for a very long time. The earth began to dry out, and crops withered.

One day, as the Black Dragon, the Yellow Dragon, the Long Dragon and the Pearl Dragon were gliding through the air, they noticed an old woman kneeling in the dust below, her face streaked with tears as she prayed. Then they noticed that the earth was cracked and brown. “Why has the Jade Emperor sent no rain?” the Pearl Dragon wondered. “Let us go to him in Heaven and ask.”

When they arrived at the throne of the Jade Emperor, he was annoyed that they had come to him, pointing out his failure. “I’ll send the rain, now go away,” he snapped.

The dragons left, relieved that all would be well again on earth. Yet when ten days passed with no rain falling, they knew the Jade Emperor had forgotten about the people on earth again. “Let us help them,” said the dragons to one another. “We can fill our bellies with water from the great ocean and spray it onto the earth, can’t we?” And so this is what they did. The moment the water touched the dry soil the wilting rice and wheat stood tall again, and the people rushed to catch the water in bowls.

Up in Heaven, the Jade Emperor caught sight of what the dragons were doing, and shouted with anger that they had taken it upon themselves to help the earth. “Bring mountains!” he roared to the Mountain God. “Crush those dragons!”

Faster than wind over rice paddies, four mountains came and bore down upon the dragons, pinning them to the earth. Yet the dragons were still full of water, and continued to pour it out, even as they were crushed. And so the four great rivers of China were formed, the Yellow River, the Long River, the Black River and the Pearl River, bringing water to the people forever.

I asked my daughter how many kind of courage she thought were involved in this story. “It took courage to show the emperor he had forgotten his job,” she said. “And it took courage to go ahead and do the job themselves.” “Do you think it also takes courage sometimes to pray for help?” I asked. She shrugged. “Maybe.”

Compare this story of self-sacrifice to the story of Fenrir the Wolf, from Viking mythology, and The Legend of the Banyan Deer, from the Buddhist tradition. In all of these stories, the powerful put themselves at risk to help the weak. Endurance, love, charity, compassion, stewardship, responsibility and leadership are values that parents can model in their own behavior toward their children as examples of all six types of courage. Of course, it’s often much easier said than done!

I know that, for myself, explaining to my daughter why I’m making a sacrifice is key. The sacrifice might be giving my money, or my mental time, or my physical effort to something other than my myself and my own immediate needs. Because fear is correlated to lack of control, we can infer that the opposite is true: courage is correlated to taking control. When I see something in the world that grieves me (poverty, injustice, hunger, etc.) I could allow feelings of helplessness overwhelm me. I could begin to fear that the world is a hopeless place. On the other hand, if I take even a small step, make a small sacrifice of money or time or effort to help alleviate that problem, I gain a measure of control. As a result, my feelings of futility diminish, and my fear subsides. Dr. Lisa has explained this eloquently in her posts about an internal v. external locus of control.

When we help others, we truly help ourselves. The greater our sacrifice, the less fear we will experience. Two quotations say this better, and more succinctly, than I have:

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.” ~ Dale Carnegie.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed. ~ Napoleon Hill

On a Journey

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” – Leo Tolstoy

Lisa and I were talking about Steven Spielberg, and that had me thinking about how this great modern storyteller’s work fits Tolstoy’s observation. Stories are about our encounter with the unfamiliar. Either we have gone on a journey and find the unfamiliar along the way, or the unfamiliar comes and finds us where we live, even if we just wanted to stay home and have a cup of coffee. Consider two of Spielberg’s many great films: Jaws, and Schindler’s List.

Jaws (one of my very favorite movies, precisely because the storytelling is so masterful) is like so many great tales that follow the “stranger” model: a monster has broken the security of our peaceful home, and the hero must conquer the monster and restore peace. Police Chief Brody had expected the island to be a quiet refuge from the dangers of New York City, only to have a more ominous danger rise from the deep (metaphor alert!) Classic stories of this type include Beowulf (both the monster and Beowulf are strangers, by the way.)

Schindler’s List, on the other hand, is a journey. (Bear in mind that most journeys in story are metaphorical; the hero travels from one emotional, psychological, spiritual, or moral state into another.) At the start of this movie Schindler’s motto is “What’s in it for Schindler?” By the end, he is weeping with regret that he had not been able to save even more lives. Classic stories of this type include, of course, the Odyssey.

The unfamiliar or the unknown is at the root of many of our fears, maybe even all of them. We don’t know what will happen to us if we try X; will that new person be our friend or not; if I go to the different place will I be safe? But because stories, at their core, are about meeting the unfamiliar, they help us experience that meeting again and again – in safety. They are a way to practice encountering strangers, facing the thing in the shadows that we can’t see. We can be fortified by this practice and apply that courage in our life.

(Readers interested in exploring what mythology and legend can tell us about the Shadow, our projection of our negative qualities onto a faceless enemy –may want to read Joseph Campbell, or watch the famous conversations between Campbell and Bill Moyers about “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” on DVD.)

But I would like to add that there are other ways to practice encountering the unfamiliar, and this may be part of our practice of developing our adaptive capacity, our ability to “roll with it” when changes occur. When I catch myself being rigid in my parenting, I know it’s time to loosen up. There is security and comfort in the familiar, for sure, and I know that predictability has been important for my daughter in her transition to life in this country; but inflexible routine can also create tedium and resentment. A few months back, the Lovely K. asked if she could sleep under the dining room table. It was a school night, and my knee-jerk reaction was to say no.

But I caught myself. What’s the worst that can happen? A poor night’s sleep and thus a cranky kid the next day? Wanting to sleep somewhere else the next night? A refusal to sleep in her own bed again? Outright sedition and rebellion? Nonsense. What I was really afraid of was change.

Yet change is exactly what I want her to be open to – to trying new things, to being willing to explore, to treat the unknown and unfamiliar as opportunities rather than threats, to have the courage to break away. I want her to develop her adaptive capacity!

“Okay,” I said when I saw where my thoughts were leading me. “Go ahead.”

She eagerly prepared a bedroll, and arranged stuffed animals in her camping spot as I began turning out lights and prepared to go upstairs. “Everything’s different under here,” she said with awed excitement.

Did you see that? That was a journey.