Obama and Oprah 2008

Now that my Presidential choice Elizabeth Edwards and her husband John have dropped out of the race, this is my new ideal for the election in November. Oprah is Goddess energy personified, the most powerful female on the planet.


Obama, if you want to win the White House, choose Oprah as your running mate!~

Be well, do good work,
Connie

Recurring Mike Dream

For years and years I have dreamt of my first "boyfriend", Michael Mattson whom I met in the 8th grade at Del Mar School and continued to make out with him for a year until the first day of High School when the Conquistador in me said, "wow, look at all these nice fish in this exciting pond!" I have come to realize how deeply affected I have been this early relationship. I explored my first steps into sexuality with him, and learned my worth very much imprisoned in my willingness to make out, or not. The first time he broke up with me it was because I wouldn't kiss him in public. I remember one conversation with this very introverted, strong, silent type man boy. He was so silent, I would often ask him, 'what's wrong?". I mean, we would just sit together never saying a word; we were 13 with absolutely nothing to say just this huge awkward silence between us. One night he snapped at me, "why did anything have to be wrong?" Forty odd years later, I see he had a point.

But there was something deeply missing in this guy. To say he was independent (he had complete freedom to be anywhere, any time he wanted to be) doesn't cover the sense of responsibility he had toward his brother. I suspect Mike's childhood ended shortly before I met him. He never spoke about his home or his parents. I intuited that his mother was single and working to support her kids but that left him to parent his brother, Stacy, a year or two younger and with a girl name like Stacy, Mike had a very protective aura about him; he was tough enough that if you teased Stacy, you were going to have to face Mike and given his mature physical body, that may have stopped you.

In 8th grade I was spending the night occasionally with this boy; the first time at a beach cottage that our friend Betty's parents took care of in the off-season. Betty sneaked the key and a bunch of us partied in some body's beach house in the middle of winter. God, it was cold! All that Mike wanted to do was make-out so that is what we did. I learned how to kiss Michael Mattson, let me tell you. But jeez, I'd get so bored after a while. I guess I wasn't as into it as he was. Curious, yes. Turned on? No. The second time was the following summer, months of kissing behind us. ( We told our mothers we were staying at Karen's house but we didn't tell them Karen's mom was out of town; Karen told her Aunt she was spending the night with me. ) Here was a group of three adolescent "couple", Karen, Sin, Carrie, Bobby, Connie, Mike, pairing off in the bedrooms to learn a few new things.

This is the night I heard Roberta Flack's recording of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". Her voice woke up my heart chakra and I tumbled irreversibly down the rabbit hole of romantic love. And this is the next morning I wake up to find his finger in my bone-dry vagina. Of course at the time, I didn't know what to think and it took years for me to own my sense rage at this, my second violation. I guess I could be grateful that he woke up my second chakra the way Roberta Flack opened my heart, but a gentleman would have asked first.

So, for years, I've been dreaming of Mike and what recurs is intense visceral physiological longing, sometimes in my vagina, but more recently, in my heart. I awoke with an aching heart the other morning, having touched him, finally, in the dreamtime, only to have him slip away again. If I researched my journals, I imagine I've dreamt Mike hundreds of times since 1972, always searching and seeking to physically connect.

In tonight's dream he and Bobby are walking toward me. When we meet, Mike says he's going surfing but the climb down the cliff to the waves is a dangerous endeavor. In typical Mike fashion, he thinks nothing of it and take a path away from us, on a road to the west, heading for the cliff with the waves far below. We've made a plan to meet later at his sister's huge, rambling wind-weathered house which is full of Mike's family. Brother's keep showing up, but not Mike. Finally, he does and we sit on the floor in front of the sofa. I put my hand on this leg, he turns on the t.v., to watch porn! (I was soooo disappointed by this turn of events!)

He tells me in the dream that we wants to marry but must go work for three months before returning. He seems unsure if I'll wait for him and I tell him that yes, of course I will. And so again, the longing comes in. But I am heartened on this journey to my animus...I am encouraged that I am moving closer to integration with this avatar of mine, Mike, who I realize now, is a protector for me but also my strong, male, warrior spirit who easily makes the choice about which cliffs to scale down, rather than jump from. He is also the bold and arrogant risk taker, who doesn't feel the need to ask permission.

This wouldn't be a true Santa Cruz dream if I didn't dream the huge nightmarish wave bearing down on me, but this time it was only one and though it was big, I knew it wouldn't catch me. Anyway, I was safely behind glass, watching it roll in and exclaiming, "oh, that's exactly the kind of wave I have nightmares about".

Namaste`
Connie

Stumble into Jesus

I was scheduled to bear the Chalice at St. Paul's Episcopal yesterday. I SO did not want to perform this service! As much as I'd tried to wiggle off the roster of readers and Chalists in the past six months, I had given my word and as a matter of personal integrity, I HAD to show up. For five years, I have loved offering that most holy of cups to the followers of Christ, but lately I've been a hypocrite, listening to, but not reciting with everyone else, a liturgy practiced by rote, that I now experience as hollow and empty of deep spiritual meaning. These words spoken by millions, every Sunday around the globe, which in itself is a fantastically miraculous thing.

A wise woman told me that when she felt conflicted with the church she’d go anyway and pray to hear just one thing. WIth her voice in my head, I showed up to offer what I could to the "service": meditative peace and serenity. I may have been reciting internal, melodic mantras instead of the Nicene Creed, but my heart was in the right place.

So, having made the commitment to show up and serve, and much as I had to drag my butt there, I was relieved to find my friend Doug as compatriot in the tag team bearing of the Holy Cup, offering the masses their elixir of Christ's blood with the following blessing: "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation" or " May the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep you in everlasting life.” Ok, this was the hard part? I kept forgetting what I was to say! And you have to alternate it and Doug and I are supposed to be saying the same thing at the same time, but who cares, cuz the awesome thing is bearing witness for folks experiencing their faith in this distinct version of "care and feeding of the soul".

(I think it's the blood part that really bugs me. Personally, I'd much rather offer chocolate chip cookies and breast milk to followers seeking salvation and forgiveness, because in a lot of ways, it is the hurt and broken child that many bring to the sacrament of communion. Ok. It's my hurt and broken child that I have brought to the ritual I just feel certain that milk and cookies would be what the HOLY BLESSED VIRGIN MARY would do... unless she was PMS or in menopause and then it would probably sound like, "make your own damned cookies, I'm busy!")


When all who came to the rail had been served, I followed our Rector, Scott, keeper of the Body of Christ, with my Cup of Salvation into the pews to offer bread and wine to a woman not able to stand. Scott stepped into the pew, I followed...

and tripped over the kneeler, stumbled, thrown way off balance but then, voila! caught myself absolutely determined not to spill a single drop of that consecrated blood! The woman's husband touched my hand and kept it there, he looked me in the eye, asked if I was ok. And it was in that moment that I recognized the love of Jesus, right there in church. The stumble took place in slow motion of course, and it was in that moment that I learned how much I do value, for those who seek salvation in it, the chalice of life-giving wine that is so central and integral to Anglican worship. The really sweet part was that the divine child in me crowed, "I didn't spill a drop!".

There was such glee and wonde, pride and delight in the voice of my beloved tender-hearted-CHILD-self! Scott did not join me in any of that - instantly I felt that child silenced for the sake of the sacrament being delivered to this woman unable to stand. I could see in her eyes that the outburst had unhinged her a bit and that my lack of comportment was unexpected and perhaps a little scary. (I am self-aware enough to know that I can be intense and just a little scary). TO say that I found the entire experience tremendously HUMILIATING would not begin to cover it. With the weight of hundreds of eyes watching, I smiled and chuckled quietly, but no other voice was muttered. So, the voice I will continue to recall is that of the one who took my hand and steadied me with a loving heart, looked me in the eye and asked after my condition. Thank you, dear one.


Maybe I'm just getting ready for the seasonal winter/lenten journey of either embracing or rejecting this Jesus guy, as the only son of God. I just want to say, "oh, give me a break!" One God? Come on! What's the point of one God? The "archetypal" Jesus is out there in the world right now, working through people like our rector, Scott, through souls like Doug, who has experienced first-hand the miraculous healing of prayers uttered in Jesus’ name. I’ve seen Jesus dancing to Moby at the Norva, and I've conjured him up holding hands with a stranger at the scene of a horrific car crash, praying for life to be spared. Jesus is awesome in his ability to be in the present moment, but his God status doesn't speak to me, and in truth, it never has, for the simple truth that the experience of women is left out of the entire fable/myth/fairy tale.

Where is the SACRED DIVINE FEMININE IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH? Sophia, the holy spirit symbolically rendered in DOVE as the physical form of WISDOM was left out of the Bible! (was the feminine just not quite important enough for those men making choices, laying down law...about what got said, what got written down, not to mention tracking down the witnesses to the red letter words that actually fell from the mans' tongue, lo those hundred years earlier?) You know, if there was one book to leave out of the Bible, why do you think WISDOM was left out? It was left out because it represented the intuitive mind, the mind that doesn't require a face for God in order to believe it exists. WISDOM represents the human capacity and hard-wired programming for higher knowledge available to each of us if we will only find our salvation in our own bodies, minds, in our hearts, not in the sky resting on clouds too far away to feel or touch. Unless you're dead.


Today, Jesus is not the way for me. I get that I am a divine being and so are you. I get that one of my lessons in this incarnation is to see the value in all humanity, not just in women and our ability to create, which hello?, kind of gives us the power to hold the future of the human race in our beautiful, soft, warm wombs, doesn't it? I will not, cannot, worship a God who plays a passive aggressive power game that ends in the sacrifice of the BELOVED. If that's the story, give me Shakespeare, he was so much more eloquent with Tragedy! It feels like the sequel to Abrahams' drama in "Old Testament v. 2". More blood, more suffering, more, "Oh! I am not worthy"? No thank you.

Jesus had a message: Love yourself. Love your God, Love your friends, your neighbors, your enemies. Beyond that, I am fatigued by all the WORDS that come between me and what it feels like to hold, to own, to offer something sacred, to clutch it in both my hands, to not spill a drop.

With due reverence and honor for your journey,
Namste`,
Connie
Connie Hanna
Norfolk VA
1-14-07

Today, I Choose Happy

On Dec. 10, 2007, I awoke from my sleep faced with a well known dynamic: things had not gone as I'd expected, financially, and I began to feel myself on the precipice of an all-too familiar abyss that, should I have chosen to fall, very possibly could have plunged me once again into the depth of winter depression.

Some brilliant psychologist coined the term SAD, or Season Affective Disorder , in an attempt to categorize a natural chemically organic phenomenon; the tendency for homo sapiens to seek the inner cave when it's dark and cold outside in the season of winter. At least, like me, for humans in the northern hemisphere. I started noticing about five years ago that what my soul sought in winter was retreat, to go within, introspect and more than anything, REST.

I talked a good game for several years about doing that; going into my natural desire for hibernation. I've tried and tried not to work in the winter, but the nature of the artist is so damned compulsive!! Might as well just expect the birds will stay in the north for the winter, where they will die of freezing temperatures and starvation. To NOT create is the artistic equivalent of staying in the north, or not retreating to the bear cave where the simple warmth of the body (or all those blankets on this bed of mine) is enough comfort to nurture a mind and body in search of peace, a soul in search of reflection and deep contemplation in order to see more clearly the inevitable clearing of the path come late March, when the stretch of road ahead is cleared of snow, and the heart, like a seed, well rested and open, will begin it's onward journey into the mystery of the unknown.

It seems to me, in my 50th winter, that I truly come to a place of recognizing that focused creative and artistic work earns and deserves this time of natural inward turning. My work has kept me so connected to the outside world all these 20 years that I continued to put the needs of others in front of my own natural inclination to retreat, out of fear that those who needed me couldn't wait for my return. Jeez, how egocentric is that? I can be so arrogant at times, I'm telling you, it humiliating!

So back to that morning of choice on the edge of the abyss. That old familiar darkness...that depression? I chose to flip that thought over and said," I choose Happy". And so I have. And since that Monday morning, when I find myself slipping into that familiar skin of worry, I stop and I tell myself, "No, I choose happy today." Indeed, that is what I find I create.

And so it is. And for this I am very grateful. May you choose happy today!

Namaste`,
Connie