Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1041

Jewels

The right to equality

image by Andrea Andrade

It is International Women’s Day. There are a lot of informative and inspirational articles out there, celebrating the achievements of womankind and highlighting the many social and cultural injustices for which, it seems, we still have to work before they can be redressed. The centuries have shifted woman from a place of matriarchal respect through every level of importance, nonentity and dismissal. As we now celebrate a swing of that eternal pendulum, there is, even within our own society, still a prevalent and insidious idea that the ‘little woman’ is somehow less than capable of being the equal of men… an idea that manifests itself almost invisibly by the raising of a surprised eyebrow when a woman exceeds expectations, even from those whose conscious thought would deny any such concept.

The Women’s Lib movement achieved a great deal in highlighting the need to balance the scales in both home and workplace and such things needed to be addressed. I recall my own dismay long ago upon finding that the men I was training in a job were automatically paid 25% more than I was, even with my seniority! I also recall the lengths many women went to in their pursuit of a perceived equality that seemed, even to my young eyes, more like competition than celebration. And, given the burned bras, the thought of what the topless wielder of a pneumatic drill would look like in later life was not one I wished to contemplate.

Call me reactionary, but I am not so sure women need to compete with men, proving we can do or be ‘as good as’ them. It should not need to be a comparative battle of the sexes, but a celebration of the complementary nature of our individual strengths. My son got it right as far as I am concerned, when long ago I was called into school. They were concerned because, during one lesson my small son had referred to God as a ‘she’. When I asked him about it, he simply replied that as God made people, cared for them, looked after things, then logically, God was a ‘she’, as that is what women do. I defended his position. Although simplistic, it made sense and it was his choice. The school were later horrified by the progression of that thought when he decided that actually, God must be a ‘He-She’ as you had to have both for everything to work as it should.

Equality, however, is more serious than whether we are allowed to go topless on a building site. There are many areas, across the globe, where women are still little more than chattels, subject to the whim of the ruling male and denied all liberty. Genital mutilation, child rape, forced marriage… these are amongst the deepest problems and must be addressed, challenged, eradicated. Not because of cultural or religious bias, but simply because women are human beings and have a basic human right to choose how we live.

We have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights; this document, though widely recognised, sadly still reflects an ideal rather than how many are obliged to live. Yet we live in an age where we constantly move around the globe, rendering borders, and thus the cultures in which we might live, more flexible than they have ever been. In the Western World women and men work side by side and the traditional roles have blurred and merged. Gender is no longer ineradicably fixed.

International Women’s Day isn’t about women. We are simply an example of what is and has been out of kilter in society. It is about human rights… the right to be oneself, to be free, to earn respect and recognition consummate with our personal efforts rather than because of a single defining factor of birth. Instead of having to fight for the rights of any group within society, isn’t it time we simply began to value the unique contribution that each of us can make to this life?

Organised chaos?

Originally posted on The Silent Eye:

Artwork produced by the Companions who attended the first annual workshop. Photograph by Matt Baldwin-Ives

I long since gave up filing things I am working on in nice neat folders. These days, if it needs attention it is on the desktop screen of the PC. Every so often it gets to a point when there is no longer anywhere free to put stuff, even when any finished lurkers have been relegated to lower levels of accessibility. Such is the state of play at present as we move into the final few weeks before the April workshop.

I will not be alone in this. Three of us are in this together. Normal service, whatever that might be, will not resume until after the event. Meanwhile, three desk chairs, three minds, and possibly half a dozen screens of various sizes will be occupied in three widely separated parts of the country. This…

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Manifest perfection

The weather has taken a turn for the better. The fields have gone from liquid mud to walkable once more so two days ago Ani and I turned left through the gap in the hedge instead of right into the wood as we have done most of the winter. Wild daffodils are almost ready to flower, the first periwinkles dot the hedgerows with china blue and great drifts of snowdrops fringe the woods. We hadn’t gone far, just up to the little copse, when a familiar shape swooped overhead. I had brought the camera and raised it in what I knew would be yet another futile attempt to catch the grace and beauty of the red kite.

They have been close this past couple of weeks. Very close. They have swooped low over the car, watched from above as we have walked in the mornings and watched from the trees as I have passed. One even landed by the car and sat while I scrabbled around for the camera on the phone. Needless to say, the picture was poor… but the encounter was amazing. To be that close to a wild kite… something with a wingspan a good foot wider than I am tall. It is a gift, every time. And every time I feel a real sense of awe.But they hadn’t been this close! I saw a dark shape perched in the tree… always a wonderful sight. It launched into the air almost immediately, though. Then the great bird dived low, flying round me, barely above arms reach! With Ani still on the five yard leash and wanting to explore, I wasn’t going to get that picture either, though I got some half decent ones, and one that showed both the speed and the closeness… pretty much all I could do was try and contain the rising bubble of joy I feel in the presence of these beautiful creatures.

It was still there when we came back and I tried again. Now, this may sound silly, but it feels like a game we play. They give me the perfect opportunity for photographs… when I am driving or don’t have the camera. When I am armed and available, they are elusive. Or I get the perfect shot, but not quite clear. Or only half a wing.  I have always known I would only get that picture when they choose to allow it. When it is their gift.

It is a long story. It began with the very first weekend that Stuart came down to visit and we had an uncanny experience with the kites. The first day they followed us… they were everywhere. One almost flew into the car. The next day, when all our plans went awry, there were nine of them wheeling overhead and swooping down to land. We followed where they led all that day, being led to very special places we did not expect or even know were there. It was from that weekend that our writing partnership and The Initiate were born, even though we did not know it at the time. The kites have a very special place in our hearts.

Far too often to ignore their keening has answered a particularly important realisation voiced. Far too often they have arrived overhead on cue. I know very well that it is a human characteristic to read more into ‘signs and portents’ than is actually there. Perhaps it is simply coincidence. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels personal.

There is a strange sense of kinship, of wordless communication. When I am troubled, when life goes wrong, they are there. It is then that I see them the closest. They sit and watch, they line the road as I drive… and eye to eye it is as if they reassure me that all will be well, no matter what happens. At such times I am reminded that it was the form of the kite that was taken by the Egyptian goddess Isis when she mourned the slain Osiris, and in that form she conceived Horus, the Hawk of the Morning. As such the kite is a symbol of the bringing to birth of something new from the ruin of the old. Their beauty, their fitness for purpose and their strength seem an affirmation that life knows what it is doing, no matter what I might think or fear. Yesterday we walked the same way, Ani and I. Of course I had the camera, and of course I hoped… and sure enough the bird was there again, wheeling high above the trees. Then, after a long walk through the fields, we came home that way again. I laughed at myself as I looked up. A line from a song was going through my mind, “…if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true…”

And the kite was there, swooping in so low I couldn’t believe it. I was treated to the most spectacular aerial display of speed and grace as it rode the wind. Sheer, unadulterated joy… I felt as if I had fireworks inside… and a feather landed at my feet. And then the kite landed too, in the tree beside me. And looked at me. And though I raised the camera, laughing, there was a feeling of utter awe. And I was finally granted that photograph.

I was beaming all evening. Every time I looked at the picture. Eye to eye, that sense of kinship, that knowledge of a shared life was simply amazing. I do not have the words, nor am I sure they exist. All I knew was that it could not possibly be any better than this moment. There could not be room in the human heart for more than this.

Today the birds were not there when we walked past the spot where I had seen them. I could see two of them wheeling in the far distance, specks against the sky. No, I had been granted my gift and for that moment which I will, I think, cherish for a lifetime, I would be eternally grateful. A little further across the field we came across the body of a hawk, little more than a feathered frame with the wickedly sharp beak. There were birds everywhere, even a woodpecker, but the kites stayed distant.

We came back the same way and my heart leapt when I saw the silhouette in the tree. I couldn’t, surely, be that privileged three days running? Then… and even writing it tears are streaming again… its mate flew in and landed beside it, and they both turned their beautiful golden eyes and looked into mine.

For the next few minutes… a liminal eternity of breathless delight… we watched each other. Then one flew up into the sunlight and I watched it become one with the sky, a prayer taking flight. Ani, normally so active, simply waited quietly. She knows. She did not move until the birds were gone.

Every part of me was singing… electrified… conscious of the flow of perfection, of the shared and sacred nature of life. We walked on. No more than a few yards… before another gift. In the middle of the afternoon, in plain view, two hares… two of the most elusive and magical creatures of the ancient heart of Albion. They are in decline and becoming even rarer…Stuart and I saw one earlier this year and were transfixed. I have only ever glimpsed one before.

They didn’t run away… not even with Ani there. They played. They groomed. They were not afraid. I couldn’t believe it. Delight overflowed as tears as I lost track of time and Ani waited quietly; Ani who will normally bark at anything feathered and chase anything that moves, laughing.

There was I thought, no more a single day could offer. But there are catkins on the hazel trees, pussy willow showing the silvery fur of its breaking buds and side by side where the old Roman Road once crossed, a pair of yews, male and female, stand sentinel… and in flower, a golden cloak over the boughs. The yew is such a magical tree, with so much folklore, so many tales told of it…it is thought to be the tree of life in many of the old stories and its branches open the gates of the Otherworld. Above it the kite wheeled once more.

I walked home in a state of joyous disbelief… and the certainty that I had been allowed a glimpse of something too vast for my little human mind to encompass, too beautiful to contain in word or image. I had, for a moment, touched eternity through a life shared with all other life and with something beyond all life of which we are yet a part. We walk through this world and feel apart from it, yet it is not so. There are no barriers between the earth and its children, though we wear feather, fur or skin. Only those we create for ourselves. As we arrived at the front door, Ani and I, a kite wheeled, keening, overhead and I knew I been blessed.

Emerald

Fly on the wall

“Leave it where I can find it easily.” This was said with a grin of pure, unholy glee. I duly placed the small, plastic object in a convenient location, knowing full well what he was going to do with it. I didn’t have to know the details. I didn’t even have to ask who the victim would be. It was obvious.

The odd thing is that until recently, they were both as bad. Both terrified of spiders for some unknown reason. They hadn’t been, once upon a time. I had made sure of that. There are few things worse than an unreasoning phobia. For me, it isn’t spiders. My phobia doesn’t even bite. I hid it for years… but there came a point where I was forced to come out of the closet and admit that I, Sue Vincent, am what is known in the vernacular as a wuss.

But having lived with that horror most of my life, I was determined my sons would not have the same problem. Now, I never liked spiders particularly. Not afraid of them at all, just wary of the fact that they turn up in the most awkward of places. Like underwear. And bedroom ceilings. And cereal packets. So I would, given the choice, avoid their presence. Raising the boys it became obvious that if I showed the least hesitation they would learn to fear, so I learned to pretend. Same with the dentist. And of course, pretending there was nothing fear taught them well and gave them a good grounding. It also had the rather surprising effect of removing my own fears. Apart, of course, from The Phobia.

But they didn’t know about that.

I recall the huge fake spider, all hairy and realistic, that we had hung on a thread ready to drop in front of my brother’s face. I recall the scream and the two satisfied grins. There was no fear then but at some point the pair of them developed a real aversion to arachnids. One, who shall remain nameless, would regularly shout for rescue, even in his teens. Even in the middle of the night. This particular son could not even bear fake spiders and the incident with the remote controlled tarantula will live in memory and would probably have made the Guinness Book of Records for the longest leap from a standing start whilst screaming.

But both left home and, for the most part at least, dealt with their own spiders by various means including ultrasonic spider repellers.

And then there was Alan.

Alan was… perhaps still is… a small and insignificant spider who took up residence in my son’s hallway. Just above the ultrasonic spider repeller. He most inconveniently wove his webs around the door, moving ‘house’ several times and festooning the ceiling with his handiwork. My son adopted him. Why, I will never know. I was not, to my chagrin, allowed to touch the webs, but told in no uncertain terms to be careful not to damage them. Alan was there to stay. It seemed this son had got over the phobia.

The other one, however, has not. Even though he has managed to make friends with an eight legged individual in his shed… a shiny black creature that seldom moves. Which is why his brother had asked me to leave the rather realistic fake spider within easy reach the other day. As I said, I knew who the victim would be.

“Mum! It got me.” The voice down the phone sounded shaky.

Sometimes our plans work brilliantly, other times they fizzle a bit. Sometimes they backfire and the popular understanding of karma comes into play. I had placed the plastic spider near the weights bench. My son had completely forgotten about it, till he saw it ‘looking at him’.

I wish I’d been a fly on the wall…

Or, given the fate of flies…perhaps not.

City

Directions

Nine Deadly Sins with Coffee

Sue Vincent:

A short series of stories by Steve Tanham, exploring the symbol of the enneagram. Further ‘conversations’ will be published every Thursday on the Silent Eye.

Originally posted on The Silent Eye:

“I read the brochure for the workshop,” she said, trying to look only partly interested.

“Ah, good,” I replied. It’s a long-practiced routine between us, this mutual act of mind-fishing.

She sipped her coffee, waiting for my silence to break . . . Nothing . . .

” . . . And I don’t understand the significance of that funny circle thingy,” she said, irritated that her half hour in the coffee shop was being eaten up by my exasperating ways.

“The ennea-thingy?” I asked, all innocence.

“Yes, dammit, the ennea-thingy!” she whooshed–yes whooshed.

“Would you like me to explain it?” I asked her; then added, looking slyly at my watch, “Well, as much of it as we can fit into the remaining fifteen minutes?”

“Yes . . .” The tone was flat, for fear of losing more time. “I’d like that.”

“From one very interesting perspective, it’s…

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ARS GEOMETRICA VI

Sue Vincent:

The next leaf of the mysterious book…

Originally posted on Stuart France:

‘…We shall all be changed for this mortal,
must put on immortality.’
- The ‘Eleventh’ Leaf.

Our respect for the stranger at our door grew…

This little device appeared to effectively marry the elements and directions in a four-fold equilibrium…

And as any aspiring psychoanalyst or psychologist knows the four-fold equilibrium of the psyche represents optimum health for the individual…

…Butterflies as souls.

We thought again of the girl whose book we now perused but who had appeared much too young to know this…

And then her voice rang out clear in our mind.

‘There is a sense in which one is one self:

There is a sense in which one is also every one else.

Such thinking is alien to the personality:

Cultivate it!’

It could have been an auditory hallucination.

We had been studying now long into the early hours.
It certainly made very little sense in conventional…

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