From the point of Light within the Mind of God Let light stream forth into the minds of men. Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God Let love stream forth into the hearts of men. May Christ* return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known Let purpose guide the little wills of men – The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the race of men Let the Plan of Love and Light work out And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
*Many religions believe in a World Teacher, a “Coming One”, knowing him under such names as the Lord Maitreya, the Imam Mahdi, the Kalki Avatar and the Bodhisattva. These terms are sometimes used in versions of the Great Invocation for people of specific faiths.
TRANSCRIPT:
Anne (00:01):
Hi everyone. It’s been some time since I’ve recorded anything or posted anything. And it’s some time that we are living in right now. I’m going to keep this short, but I’m going to invite you to say this along with me. It’s called The Great Invocation and it’s something that I have incorporated into my own daily routine for a number of years. And I’ll post the words to it along with this recording, as well as a link to explain its history and how it came to be. It’s been around for a long time, and I think it is important and needed now more than ever. And the more of us that say it daily, the more chance we have of bringing it forth and manifesting what can be. And so here goes:
Anne (01:06):
From the point of Light within the Mind of God Let light
stream forth into the minds of men. Let Light descend on Earth. From the point
of Love within the Heart of God Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth. From the center where the Will of God is known Let
purpose guide the little wills of men – The purpose which the Masters know and
serve. From the center which we call the race of men Let the Plan of Love and
Light work out And may it seal the door where evil dwells. Let Light and Love
and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
Have folks replaced traditional religion with an unquestioning faith in the doctrine they call “Science?”
Anne Mason, Thea Mason and Drake Mason-Koehler discuss.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:01 Okay.
Here we are again with Drake on the East coast. Thea down in Southern California,
me, Anne, up here in Northern California. And last time we got together we
talked about organized religion. And again, I want to just briefly preface this
dialogue just like all the others with an explanation of why we’re doing this.
It’s, it’s really just an examination. It’s asking questions. It is an attempt
to find perhaps new language for a growing, ever expanding consciousness as
we––as I understand––are moving into a new age. And so here we are again. We
spoke about organized religion last time and while I have a great deal of
respect for the practice of organized religion, all that it offers, a
foundation of morality and a guideline for growing, positive living. I also see
some downsides to it. And what we discussed last time was the tendency sometimes
to get stuck in a fixed set of beliefs which don’t then promote continued
examination and looking at things from a new perspective, which then in turn
doesn’t support learning. And for us to expand our consciousness, for us to
continue moving forward and grow, we need to keep learning. And so following
that, I’d like to discuss just briefly in this brief conversation what I see as
a kind of new secularist religion called “Scientism.” And it’s a term
that is being bandied about more and more these days. It’s a distinction
between actual science––which is a method of observation and measurement and
theory based on those observations and measurements and experiments––versus a
doctrine. And before we started recording, Drake and I were talking a little bit
about my experience––and I think we’ve all had this experience where, whether
it’s climate change, whether it’s medicine,vaccines or really any area where
science has brought us to an understanding and a practice and a theory––I’m
finding that when people challenge those theories, whether it’s in social
media, online debates, or in person, often, even if I, for example, provide
studies that challenge the consensus, the response will be “It’s science.
Don’t you understand science?” Do either of you have this experience?
Drake: 03:48 Yeah.
Something that came up for me when you were talking, Anne, was the way that
people appeal, not so much to the method of science, but to science as some
sort of credible, accepted institution. Right? That things need to be peer
reviewed and pass through a certain number of tests or examinations before they
are accepted as, you know, science. And in thinking of what it means to
challenge that practice––because really if one’s going to have faith in a
methodology, it seems to me that you need to actually examine what that method
is taking for granted. Like what, what a certain type of methodology is taking
for granted. And something that I’ve been learning over this past year, as my
education has continued, is that every single science has its presuppositions
that it has to take for granted. I wouldn’t pretend to know anything very
complex about any of these sciences like biology or physics or chemistry but I
do know that, or I think I know, that for example, biology takes the existence
of life for granted, right? Like it goes back to very basic presuppositions that
it has to assume that, or the science can’t work. And I think there’s other
suppositions that kind of weave themselves into the method of science.
Drake: 05:33 And
if those aren’t examined then I think science can result in wrong conclusions.
Like, I think of like if you’re, if you’re trying to draw two parallel lines
and it’s a little bit off in the beginning,, then a mile down the road, it’s
going to be way, way off. Well and something I thought of that I learned about
last semester was a guy named William Harvey in England who basically figured
out that the blood was a system of circulation. You know, he figured out that
the blood, that the heart pumps the blood through, you know, that it passes
around the lungs. Then it goes to the other, you know, different ventricles of
the heart, goes through the entire body and then circulates back to be re
oxygenated. And he figured that out by questioning the established doctrine of
the time, which was Galenism. And because Galen said no, the heart does this
specific function only and that was it––and that was the accepted thinking in
the universities––and Harvey started cutting open, he started dissecting
animals and going, actually that doesn’t make sense. Like he had to question
the method of actually, the method of the practice of the anatomical science at
the time to make this breakthrough. And so it seems like that should still
apply.
Thea: 06:52 And
we could then take that same gesture or standpoint of not just going with what
you’re given. It’s that you have to continuously be testing and making
observation about your practice of religion, your practice of science or the
method of science.
Anne: 07:15 Drake
just left us for a moment. Okay. He’s back.
Thea: 07:24 So
I was just saying that it seems like that’s the same sort of point that we were
talking about––organized religion––is that, stay awake! Stay awake and pay
attention that you don’t hand over your own seeing to another. And in terms of
the practice of science and observation, that has to continue, you know,
recognizing this is a presupposition, this is where we’re starting from, but
that’s not the whole totality of whatever it is we’re observing or studying
because you’re given this presupposition to start from.
Anne: 08:01 Yes,
absolutely. I agree. I try to constantly question. But even within those
sciences, which are founded on a presupposition, I’m seeing a dangerous lack of
critical thinking when people are working with these theories, discussing these
theories. Let me go on a little bit of a tangent. There is a lawn sign I have
been seeing a lot up here––I don’t know if you guys have something similar down
there––which makes a few, there’s a few statements. I find it absurd. It seems
like a virtue signaling type of thing, but it says something like “women’s
rights are human rights,” “black lives matter,” “love is
love,” whatever that means. And “science is real.” And
“science is real.” What does that mean? And so, you know, that’s what
I’m, I’m focused on right now. It’s beyond the fact that Drake, what you’re
saying is, is absolutely true. We need to constantly question even the
foundations of our working theories. Otherwise we’re going to get stuck in a
more and more narrow framework of theory. So we have to constantly question
even its foundation, re-examine it. But beyond that, we have to recognize that
science itself is simply a method. It is not a truth. I don’t really even know
how to get my head around saying something like, “science is real.” I
don’t understand it when people say to me––in response to me challenging germ
theory even, right? We are developing a new understanding of our immune system
and the human microbiome, virome, and the fact that the environment of our body
is a huge factor in terms of whether or not one person contracts a disease
versus another person who is exposed to the same virus or bacteria. Right? So
that is is shifting, that is growing, that is expanding. We’re developing a new
understanding of this. When I present this information or present studies that
demonstrate, that challenge, the idea that, “Oh, it’s just the germ that
makes someone sick,” someone will say “It’s science. Don’t you get
science?” Without even having to discuss the argument.
Drake: 11:40 Well
that’s funny, for it seems like they’re not even, they’re not even discussing
the science then. Because the science, science is just a chain of reasoning
within a certain set of parameters. Like, to do science is to reason your way
with certain parameters that, you know, at least in modern science, that you’ve
set for yourself and to the conclusion that follows. So, when you’re talking
about these lawn signs that are saying “science is real,” that sounds
to me like putting a sign in your lawn that says, you know, “logic is
real.” Like absolutely, logic is real. But logic can be wrong. You can
have, you can have conclusions that are logically true, but if your premises
are wrong, the logic is false. Like, so same thing. A chain of reasoning is
real. Yes, definitely real. But it can still be wrong.
Thea: 12:29 Well
the combination of statements on the sign is curious to me. What does science
have to do with, you know, rights of human beings having the right to be, and
be safe, you know? But it also then leads to that thought that that’s really
just that “science is real” is a belief. So it is now outside of the
scope of logic or reason. Saying, “science is real” is like, that
sounds like a doctrine.
Drake: 13:00 Not
science.
Anne: 13:00 Yeah,
and I don’t remember now what, I think there was a climate change statement on
that one too. Right? So, you know, and that’s where I’m––for the sake of time
we won’t get too much into it––but that’s where I am wanting to explore what I
do see as kind of a new religion. So Scientism often––it includes the doomsday
prophecy of climate change, right? I’m not on any level suggesting that the
climate isn’t changing. But whereas peak oil theory was Scientism’s doomsday
theory prophecy in the naughts, right? The two thousands. Now it seems like
it’s, “Ah! Climate change! We’ve got to change our ways!” It’s kind
of, it’s the new religion’s Apocalyptic prophecy and warning. So we’ve got that
going on. And then we also have this very fixed set of beliefs that…what I am
seeing you know, I see the priests of Scientism––and not saying the good ones,
the good scientists, the good doctors are always examining, are always
questioning––but I am seeing people grant authority over themselves. I think
they are giving the authority to doctors, to scientists, to the experts to tell
them what is and what isn’t, what they should and shouldn’t do.
Thea: 14:58 Creating
a reality there.
Anne: 14:59 In
a similar way that the downside of organized religion, I think, handed that
over to the priest. So we’re coming up to 15 minutes and I know Drake has to
get going, but I think this is something to examine. I think that for all of
the secularists’ focus on rejection of organized religion, to me it seems as if
they simply replaced it with a new religion.
Drake: 15:40 New
authority. Right?
Anne: 15:43 It’s
a new authority. So that’s what it is, Drake. It’s a new authority. Whereas God
and the priests are not their authority. Science as a God, almost? And the
priests of that Scientism is the authority? Is that right?
Drake: 16:08 I
wonder. Yeah. It’s like, it’s just, it seems very comforting to me to think of
people who don’t screw up. You know, like I didn’t grow up in organized
religion so I didn’t, I guess I didn’t grow up with a conception that there’s
always someone watching out for me doing the exact right thing––of a God figure
or a priest figure. But a lot of people that I speak to, just lately, talk
about science as if it’s some group of people somewhere who don’t mess up. And
that’s appealing, right? Like that’s nice to think that there might be people
that don’t mess up, but it’s not true.
Thea: 16:46 Well,
because it’s taking it from the religious realm, where there was faith involved
and the unseen––to the realm of “it’s reason and logic and that is above
all what we can trust. And it’s real.” So it’s interesting because we do
believe in reason and logic and those are good. But like you said, Drake, if
the beginning realm that the reason follows is off, then you have something
that’s false and now you have people believing it, or saying “it’s
real” in particular arenas.
Anne: 17:25 Or
simply if we missed something in our observations, that we then finally pick
up, well that’s going to change the working theory and that’s going to change
the entire model. Right?
Thea: 17:39 Can
I say one more quick thing? The thing that always––and science is not my
practice, I mean observation is though, so I guess in one way it is––the thing
that has always blown my mind learning the scientific method was that you could
only test that which you could conceive of. And so everything is limited there
in terms of creating theories and working theories. It’s only based upon what
you already know or think you know, and that right there is like, what?
Anne: 18:15 Right.
Your own reality. It’s only based on the reality that you can observe at that
moment. And as we all know, even from the time, like we said in the last one,
from the time you’re five years old to the time you’re seventy five years old,
our consciousness, our perceptions, our realities change. We perceive more,
differently. Right? So the same goes every day. So anyway, let’s get going and
pick this up I think next time, as we’re kind of formulating the discussion for
next time.
Thea: 18:50 Sounds
good. Thanks so much guys. Nice to see you.
Drake: 18:53 Alright.
Anne: 18:53 Alright,
let me, let me stop recording. You too.
How does consciousness grow if we subscribe to a fixed set of beliefs?
Anne Mason, Thea Mason and Drake Mason-Koehler examine and discuss.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:00 Okay. Hello there. We’ve got Drake from the East Coast. Thea down in SoCal. Me up here in Northern Cal. We’re going to try to make this quite a short one because Drake has to leave. So I want to start this out by talking just a little bit about why we’re doing these, this series of discussions, Thea and I often talk like this all the time anyway as do Drake and I when we have a chance to be together and we thought it would be a good idea to just share it with others who might be having some of the same streams of thought or questions and want to join in to the discussion. The tagline on the website, on the Sacred Osiris website is: Into the Age of the Fifth Sun, and that refers to the Mayan calendar, the Mayan elder prophecies that we are in transition and moving into a new age, which corresponds to many other prophecies of ancient texts and religions.
Anne: 01:15 Even
astrologically moving out of the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius. So I
perceive us––of course, we hopefully are always moving forward in
consciousness. Hopefully we are always growing and developing and expanding our
consciousness. Evolving. But if we are between ages, marked ages, this transition
is likely even more dramatic. And perhaps we could use even a little bit more
attention and effort as we, as we find new language to express this transition
and perhaps new conceptions and new consciousness that we may be emerging into.
So, so it’s a dialogue and it’s, it’s just a lot of questions and obviously we
don’t have the answers and obviously we have some opinions. But the topic I
wanted to talk about is organized religion.
Anne: 02:29 And
I say that having a lot of respect for the practice of organized religion but
not subscribing to one particular set of beliefs that have, has been initiated
by someone else or organized by someone else, but rather kind of an amalgam of
my own study and practice and sense and faith and belief. And 49 years of life
experience. So the question I guess, or my, my issue with organized religion as
relates to what I just said is that––and let me back up for one second.
Something I love about Anthroposophy, Waldorf teaching is the, the approach to
teaching the approach to answering questions, especially when the child is
young. You know, “Why is the sky blue?” Rather than answer with an
explanation of the way light reflects, refracts off molecules in the air. One
might say, “I wonder?”
Thea: 03:46 As
opposed to answering with a finite sort of dead answer that stops the
questioning.
Anne: 03:55 That
stops the wonder. Right? I think the idea in Waldorf teaching is to just let it
keep going in one way or another. Right? Whether it’s as the children are older
and you are having a discussion that takes you down many pads or not, but if we
answer anything with, with just like a hard and fast fact, well, that’s done,
right?
Drake: 04:25 Yep. Interesting. I remember having a discussion in class this week that left me feeling sort of unsettled. And it’s funny that you’re mentioning Waldorf because Waldorf education has been on my mind a lot this week––because my verse, I think it was my verse in fourth grade, came back to my mind: To wonder at beauty, stand guard over truth. Look up to the noble, resolve in the good. And I think that was the first line that we would say everyday when we, when we left class…When I was getting kind of embroiled in the deep that, you know, the intellectual details of something. I’m getting stressed out about it. You know, I can’t figure out this, this one little thing. And I was like, well, how about I wonder at the beauty of it? Let me just look at––of this mathematical proposition or whatever it was and just kind of sit in that. And sure enough, I understood it a little bit later. Once I stopped the frenzied, you know, logic because it can, you know, when you’re trying to figure out a problem, you can get very stuck and not see what you’re missing or what presupposition you missed.
Drake: 05:35 And Anne, when you’re talking about different ages or people switching the way that they think about things, what came to my mind was presuppositions. Because if you want to have a mode of thought or a doctrine that’s going to allow you to evolve, it seems important that it would be a motive thought or a doctrine or philosophy or whatever it is that urges you to examine the presuppositions of the philosophy itself or the doctrine itself. And maybe that’s what organized religion doesn’t do. Maybe that’s something it really explicitly doesn’t do––is urge you to question why you’d be associated with that particular organized religion. And that’s supposition on my part, I don’t have evidence to back that up right now. I don’t have a lot of life experience with a particular organized religion, but just from my reading of different texts, that seems something that perhaps the actual teachers, you know, like, like Buddha or Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita, Christ. I think they do, they do urge people to actually think about things. But then the customs or laws laid down after those teachers by other people who embrace those religions maybe don’t as much.
Thea: 07:12 It
makes me think a little bit, Drake as you say, that like that the teachers themselves
were teaching, one of it was to maintain interest in things and questions. That
space of wonder. And what seems to be one of the things that people in general,
one of the places where we get tripped up is that wanting to claim something
entirely or, or be secure. I wonder if it comes from a sense of wanting to be
secure in some finite existence that the wondering stops. Like it’s a failing
of humans. Maybe not a failing, but it’s a habit. It’s not necessarily what the
teachings are at all. Right? That the teachings and that thread, stream of
wisdom isn’t finite like that, but that’s what we’ll do to it––like hanging on
to the image of it rather than penetrating to the essence of it.
Drake: 08:20 Yeah.
Or just, I mean, and that seems to be simply like staying in your comfort zone,
right? And that doesn’t have to be something that is totally seen as negative.
Like, yeah, all of us humans are going to do that, want to stay in our comfort
zones, but if we can understand that it applies intellectually or religiously
or spiritually as well. Because I feel like we, at least personally, I don’t
often think about it applying to those areas as well. Like, oh, you know, I
wanna stay in my comfort zone in terms of I don’t know, how hard I’m working at
something or some other aspect of my life that’s maybe more external and easier
to examine and I might not realize, “Oh, wow! It might also be my natural
tendency to stay in my comfort zone religiously or spiritually” or
whatever these other aspects of, of life that are less tangible.
Anne: 09:17 Yeah.
I mean, humans have this kind of dichotomous relationship with change and the
unknown. So we are drawn to it because we are curious and we have an innate
need to grow, as do all beings. But it’s scary too. So we like to find answers
that we can rest upon, I’d imagine. Right? I really like your point, Drake,
that probably the original teachings and teachers we’re conveying a truth and
spirit to others who then took that and fixed it. I mean, when I say fixed, put
it in a fixed organization that can be handed down and worked with as a
framework, always difficult to do. So I guess, since I don’t practice an
organized religion either and my main experience is with Catholicism, but I
didn’t get that deeply involved in it. I can’t speak to the tenets of all the
different religions. I do agree that a foundation of morality is critical to a
society, a family, a religion, anyone. Right? But those can be principles that
are not challenging to understand. But when we get into pedantic details, even
of…I was having a conversation with someone whose religion does not subscribe
to a belief in reincarnation. And the first thing that I think I remember him
saying is we don’t believe in reincarnation. Right? And so that, that just
saying, “we don’t believe,” to me that’s problematic because, I mean,
I’m not a collective. I work with people and I need people, and I I learn from
people, and I also share some beliefs with people, but I don’t like saying
“we believe.” I believe. So far, too. I believe, so far. Best I can
ascertain. Here’s what seems to make sense to me. Sorry, go ahead.
Drake: 12:50 Well,
yeah, that’s just what jumped to my mind when you said, “we don’t
believe,” for some reason, I thought of the “royal we,” how a lot
of a lot of literature when kings are speaking, from like older times, they use
the “royal we” and it like is it from themselves? And I was like, oh,
well, obviously, royalty, authority. You know, like if you’re saying “we
don’t believe,” it’s like this credence of authority that you’re like
interweaving with your opinion. Your opinion is the authority, and an authority
kind of seems like something that’s less likely to be questioned.
Anne: 13:23 Well, yeah, right. Also, you know what I think of though? I think of the Borg from Star Trek, right? The collective, hive mind, “we believe.” Right? Anyway. But back to that topic, for example, reincarnation. Look, I don’t know. For sure. To me, there’s enough evidence out there and certainly enough has been passed on through the hermetic traditions by many that I respect to suggest that reincarnation is something. Does exist. However, as I pointed out to my friend, maybe the ultimate goal is to stop cycling. Perhaps the goal is to stop reincarnating. Perhaps, perhaps that’s the goal for humanity. Perhaps that’s the goal for each individual soul––if you subscribe to that belief that there’s a soul––and perhaps it was interpreted somewhere along the way that because the goal is to not cycle, it doesn’t exist. But, but doesn’t want one need to leave room for the possibility that it does? Doesn’t one need to leave room for the possibility that there is something contained in every religion––every current modern religion being practiced, and every ancient religion that we have learned about, and every future one going forward––that there is some, some piece of the puzzle there that cannot be ruled out?
Thea: 15:17 What it draws to my mind a bit is there’s certain stories––and I know Drake can relate and probably you––that I like to reread every few years, even novels or whatever, to come back to a story. And every time I read it, as I live more life, I see more in the story that was always there, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have the experience within myself to reflect it and see it. And so it makes me think a little bit of the teachings of these different lines, these different religions, that that’s why there has to be a continuous study and penetration of the wisdom that’s passed to us. Because if we take it at face value, we see it in the way we saw something when we were five or ten or fifteen or twenty five or whatever it is. Instead of allowing it to just continue to work on us and for us to work with it in that expanding depth of anything that’s true or you know, that has that seed in it.
Drake: 16:36 That’s
funny. That makes me think a couple people last night were talking about a
certain Homer translator that is disliked in my dorm. And part of the reason
for that, and this is debatable, is that part of her philosophy of translating
is that when Homer repeats these epithets that he did because it was an oral
poem and he was remembering he needed to remember what came between. So he
would have these easily repeatable lines “dawn with rose red fingertips”
or the “wine dark sea”, like things that he would draw on––the sea,
it’s the wine dark sea. Dawn, it was this dawn. But this one translator, she
translates it completely differently every single time, because she wants the
reader in English to be struck with the image as if it was a new image every
single time. So she’s giving different words to it.
Drake: 17:33 And
I think I, I get, I think I understand why she’s doing that because it’s more
impactful for the reader. But the flip side is it seems like that takes some of
the work of the person reading the book away, right? You really try, you can read
it and get something different out of that image or be struck by that image,
equally, if you’re actively (inaudible) every single time in one of them
lesions. And so this seems to get into, like, if you’re going back and
rereading a text, whether it’s a religious text or some other thing that’s
helping guide your morality or your spirituality or anything it takes effort to
read it differently, right? Like it naturally happens if you let years, if
years go by and then you go back and read a book you’re probably gonna get
something out of it just cause you’ve changed as a person in that time. But if
you’re, if you’re a practicer of a religion and you’re doing it every single
day or every week or something like that, it’s hard. Like, it’s hard to read the
same things over and over again and have it, you know, hit you like have it
really stir something in you every single time. Like it seems to be a
difficulty of prayers too. Like if you have a prayer you repeat, it’s a really
good practice and I, and I admire it. But to feel it every single time instead
of having it be habit. And maybe, maybe the habit’s not bad as well, but it
came up when I was hearing you guys talk about that.
Anne: 19:04 Yeah,
and that’s also why the, the curriculum, the Waldorf curriculum, there’s,
there’s a new verse every year for the growing, the changing consciousness of
the child to say. A new prayer. Right? So we’re going to wrap this up so that
Drake, you can go on to practice and we can make this shorter for people as
well. I think that something that’s always been very helpful to me is, I mean,
this is not a new concept. That’s why comparative religion, comparative
religious studies is something that people do in university. I hope they still
do. I don’t know. But I think that doing whatever one can, to stimulate thought
and reconsideration so that we can continue looking at things from a slightly
new perspective, a fresh perspective, whether it’s engaging with new people,
other people reading the texts of other religions that are different than the
one that you practice, and allowing for possibility. To me that would temper
the problem that I have with a strict dogmatic practice that organized religion
often becomes. And dead. A deadened one, I found that with Catholicism, and I’m
sure that that was my experience with it. And it’s not many people’s, because I
know some Catholics who blow my mind with their connection to so many
dimensions of realms and spirit and God and faith. Like blow me away. So it’s
not Catholicism that is the problem, but certainly how I came to it or how it
was introduced to me or the priest that was heading things up, I guess. Butso
anyway, I guess that’s the conclusion for now and we can continue this
discussion in another, we can continue this dialogue in another discussion.
Thanks guys.
What does a priest provide that we can’t provide ourselves?
Sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason discuss––with returning guest Drake Mason-Koehler.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:01 Okay.
Here we are again, we’re going to dive into some possibly controversial topics.
I want to ask the question, can we be our own priests?
Drake: 00:18 Yeah.
Remembering what we were talking about last time where we, we sort of discussed
different spiritual paths that people might have, whether they, I believe in
God, whether they don’t believe in God whether they’re agnostic and whatever
they’re sort of moral guidelines or a spiritual path might be. And coming back
to this question of whether we could be our own priest, I feel like that leads
me to think about what are the things that I would want a priest to do. ‘Cause
I’ve never been a part of an organized religion. I’ve never had a priest. I’ve
gone to church a couple of times, I’ve talked with a couple different priests,
and it seems like a very important thing is that you would confide, right? And
I know that that’s different in Christianity depending on whether you’re
Protestant or Catholic in terms of things that confession and stuff like that.
But that kind of leads to this difficulty of building up a relationship with
yourself where you actually confide things or dialogue about things with
yourself, whatever that would look like. Would it be a journal? Would it be a
prayer? Would it be a conversation with a loved one? I feel like these are all
different spaces that you could sort of hold that confidence with.
Anne: 01:45 So
in that’s the context of a counselor almost. Right? So a priest serves as a
counselor and a guide to people. And we all need that sometimes. The reason the
question comes up for me is that I have a difficulty with the idea of a
middleman between me and my source. And maybe I have it wrong. Maybe the priest
doesn’t get in the way of that. I don’t know. But Drake has gotten me reading
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and I’m only about halfway through. Drake
has read it and there’s a particular chapter that came to mind when we were
talking about this before we started recording. Drake, could you describe it
briefly?
Drake: 02:59 Yeah.
Well, we were talking about about The Grand Inquisitor (chapter), and I
remember I first read that book in high school and then re-read it recently.
And it’s pretty life changing. But I do remember that chapter where one of the
brothers presents a poem to his younger brother. And in the poem––it’s set in
the Inquisition in Spain where many heretics have been burnt––and Jesus
appears. And the Inquisitor instead of celebrating or kneeling down or anything
like that, sends Jesus off to prison. And then comes down later, I think it’s
later that evening, to interrogate him and tell him how in refusing the
temptations of the devil––which is in I think Matthew and Luke section four or
something like that––how they damned mankind to be free and who they choose to
worship, to have freedom of conscience and have to try to be their own
conscience. And he, the Inquisitor talks about how the church has stepped in to
be that authority and to be what he thinks Jesus couldn’t be. Keep in mind, I
mean I have to keep in mind this is all Dostoevsky’s view of the church. But
what the Inquisitor lists off that he thinks that the church has provided for
people, that Jesus refused to give, is miracle, mystery and authority. And so I
feel like in Anne’s question of, “Can we be our own priests?”, well
then we have to ask like, is that necessary? Like do we want the authority of a
priest? Do we want miracle to come from, cause that’s another thing when you’re
talking about, you know, not wanting a priest. I feel like, I mean I know human
beings can be incredible, but I don’t look at them as exalted in that way. And
I feel like that’s something that rubs me the wrong way. If someone was to tell
me I needed a priest to have a relationship with God, I’d be like, well, I know
he’s studied the text more than I have, but what makes what makes them special?
Thea: 04:54 We’re
all creations of the, out of some divine.
Anne: 04:58 Right.
If we all have a divine spark in us, if we are all God’s children, why should
one have more authority over that relationship than another?
Thea: 05:14 And
I mean, and that’s wherewe were talking a little bit about the priest or
whatever the Holy person is in a tradition that they do provide that quality of
being a wise person, an elder or some sort of a guide like we just spoke of.
And then there’s also that these are people who are dedicating their lives to
this practice of this religion, of this tradition. And so therefore they’re
giving their time and energy and efforts in a daily practice that maybe
strengthens…The reason I’m saying this is because when you were saying that,
it’s like, yeah, do they have a direct line to God? Is it like their channel’s
a little clearer? And maybe that is what it is a little bit. Maybe their
channel and frequency is tuned in a little bit more clearly, and in a stronger
path to it because it’s been practiced.
Anne: 06:30 Well,
and because they are devoting themselves to that. Right? Whereas we’re raising
kids, we’re doing the work in the worldly world that is not giving us that time
or allowing that, allowing us to become as learned first off in that way so
that we have so many resources to draw upon, but also that we are not spending
as much time in prayer, in meditation, and perhaps in direct connection with
source.
Thea: 07:05 I
mean that’s a question. That’s a possibility.
Drake: 07:09 I
think at least on the moral side of things. And in speaking to that sort of
like need for authority, like if we do have a need for authority, because it
seems especially like today, it seems a big claim to say that people have a
need for religious authority. It’s like you can just look around and be like,
plenty of people don’t seem to have that need. Right? But it seems fair to say
that we at least have some sort of tendency to want to, to look to a moral
authority when it comes to things. And we might want to escape it. But we so
often, like at least I know I so often want to appeal to something, to be able
to judge actions. To be able to look at myself, you know, have I treated these
people right? Like what am I going to compare that to? And when you’re talking
about people who’ve dedicated their life to something, it seems like that’s an
easy way to, to feel trust. Like this person is going to hopefully tell me the
right thing to do. They’ve dedicated their life to being able to tell me the
right thing to do.
Anne: 08:10 Yeah,
yeah. They’ve been studying this so much. They intimately understand it. They
have dissected it, they have contemplated it.
Thea: 08:19 And
they’ve observed, right? And had experience. And seen others.
Drake: 08:25 Well,
people are busy, right? Like, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to be able to do your
whole day at work or do whatever it is you’re doing. Take care of your kids and
then check in with yourself and be like, you know, how am I holding up to this
moral standard? That’s a whole extra level of work to do and trust in yourself.
That’s difficult.
Thea: 08:44 And
that takes us a little bit too, and I don’t know if I segue too much right
here, but the need of, what was it you said? Magic, mystery, authority?
Miracle, mystery and authority. But that we were talking about a little bit in
terms of this idea of being our own priest or priestess is having ritual,
having a practice of some sort that brings us back to that space of reflection
or meditation or whatever it is. Something that is part of our daily rhythm
that brings us to a space of that observation really, or contemplation in some
way. And I was saying that that’s what, you know, Hatha yoga came out as, I
mean that’s a practice for the householder to attain self-realization. You
know, because you are busy with life works of managing a household and children
and all of that. But then ritual, magic, when you were saying the need for a
moral authority, that, I mean our sense of that checking in with ourselves, but
also, I mean, we look at our world, we have a need for mystery and miracle, you
know, that is huge. And we see it in people’s excitement of tech, technological
advances. We see it in all sorts of these things that show a little bit of
mystery that we go Ooh. And miracle. Okay. So anyway, I went all over.
Drake: 10:42 So
that’s a funny thing looking at the, at the modern world, like I mean, so few
of the people that I know are a part of organized religion, and I know they’re
still so many people that are and have that as a part of their daily life. But
it seems like generally, or in many cases, we don’t want the miracle, mystery
and authority all in the same place. Like we still want those things, but to
have them all in one figure, it seems like, I mean, so when you’re talking
about us being our own priests, it brings back the conversation to like, well
would I want a priest to do that if I was going to have a priest, I don’t know.
Anne: 11:33 Well
so correct me if I’m wrong. I think where you’re going is that so the miracle
and mystery, well we can perceive certainly the mystery, right? We can perceive
that there is the mystery, and we might be able to bear witness to the miracle.
Right? But do we also then want to answer the question? Do we want to then
appeal to our own authority in making sense of all of it? Is that kind of what
you’re saying?
Drake: 12:06 Right.
Yeah. Cause I mean that, that at times that seems impossible. Right? To, you
know, at the end of the day, come back and have yourself as the authority.
Thea: 12:20 Yeah.
Well, I wonder if there’s something else in that authority is that that’s a
thread to community and not being alone. When there is an authority and you, if
there are many that link to an authority figure in some way, that builds
community.
Drake: 12:43 Right.
I feel like elders that I’ve known, you know who I’m thinking of. But like they
can be that figure in a community to some extent. I mean in a different way,
but still someone that another young person and I can look to and, and go, you
know, we’re going to be reverent to this person because look how much he’s
lived and look what he has to say. Let’s listen. Because if we’re both doing
that, it’s somehow affirming both of us, both of our experience in the moment,
right? Like if we’re both, we’re both hushing down when this older man is
talking or we’re both, you know, offering to help this older person. Like it’s
a shared reverence that shows we’re both kind of on the same wavelength.
Thea: 13:27 And
that’s one of the things that I think is so important. And I think maybe that’s
one of the things that comes out of the need for something outside of
ourselves. Is that sense of togetherness that we feel with others when we are
having something shared, something profound that we share.
Anne: 13:51 Well
so makes me think of a couple of things. Number oneI suppose this might seem
obvious, but the priest is channeling, presumably channeling communication with
God, connection to source and representing in some ways. A representative. The
priest is a representative in the same way, you know, you might say parents are
also representative to the child of the divine. We are an earthly manifestation
to channel that perhaps. And speaking to your point, Thea, and yours, Drake,
that, together we all revere, rightfully revere our elders, first of all. Our
elders and those who have experienced and become wise. And so even in revering
them, they do become elevated, right? And so…go ahead.
Drake: 15:13 Well,
right. And in that sense, they seem like a representative too, right? Like if
someone has made it to 80 years old and they look happy, they’re healthy. And
they’re talking about, you know, whatever it is, some experience or you know,
they’re telling their grandchild that was the wrong thing to do. And explaining
something to them. It seems that they’re representative of living a good moral
life. Right? And I’m sure there’s immoral old people…
Thea: 15:43 Well,
not all old people are wise. I mean, not all old people shine.
Drake: 15:50 Well
and not for everyone would you hush your voice as they, when they start
talking, because you have some sort of reverence., And I feel like with many,
many elderly people, that’s my initial reaction because they at least seem like
a representative of that. So when Anne’s talking about the priest being a
representatives and parents being representative, like you were thinking about
parents also as a representative of wisdom, too. Right?
Thea: 16:16 And
that’s what I was saying––or is it the same thing really like that not
necessarily only that vessel of communication from the divine or the source,
but the wisdom that comes through experience and observation, but from my
experience so far in the moments where I feel like I’m exercising wisdom, when
other things fall away and what’s left is that wisdom or that experience or
that compassion of truth, when the other things fall away, that to me there is
something in that that that is a channeling of what is good and true and, and
is. Regardless.
Drake: 17:05 Well,
it’s like, I mean to look, I feel to look at something similar to that in a
different way is like, it’s almost just like giving different things different
weight, right? Like seeing what’s really most important or what’s truly
relevant. Right. The other things falling away and being left with a single
thing in a given moment, in any given moment that this is the most relevant
thing right now. Even being in any dire situation and your wisdom or your past
experience is telling you, okay, this is exactly what we need to do right now.
And nothing else is important. It’s kind of going to one thing by itself all of
a sudden.
Anne: 17:41 Well
and so I would like to not go a whole lot longer this time. So I also am
hearing that the priest serves as one we can dialogue our experiences with. So
that we can find some objectivity to our subjective experiences. And I
explained, one of the reasons that I felt that having a priest, having a
middleman there to me is problematic––the other reason ismaybe this is too long
a conversation right now, but going back to The Grand Inquisitor the Grand
Inquisitor who was actually also the Cardinal, right? The Cardinal, the Bishop?
We find out later as he relates to Jesus that actually about 800 years ago they
started working with the other guy, right? And they are basically, they are,
they are working with Satan. And, and the people are none the wiser. So having
a priest in that capacity, in that role––it is ripe for corruption. Right? So,
you know, maybe this is something to explore beyond this conversation, but so I
see ideally now, and I understand even better ideally why we have a priest
outside of us to help us dialogue and relate to our source. But I do see some
problems with it. We have all seen the corruption around us and how that power
and authority can be and has been misused.
Drake: 19:47 Right.
And I feel like that that highlights again, looking for ways to be your own
authority because you can follow, you can, you know, through every chain of
like of authority, you can find someone for this authority to be accountable to
and someone for this authority to be accountable to and so on forever. And it’s
never going to be infallible, right? No person is going to be infallable.
Right? So it seems like, I don’t know, I feel like my takeaway right now is
that I’m my best shot in some ways.
Thea: 20:21 Well,
I think so. I mean, even when we have someone who we revere, we can hear that,
but then we still have to be coming to our own process.
Drake: 20:34 It’s
hard though. It’s hard to revere someone and not sort of fall into a blindness
regarding their faults.
Thea: 20:40 Well,
we have a tendency to that. But I think if, I mean, when I think of the
teachers I have who are doing it well, they don’t allow people to put them up
there and worship them. You know, they remember and remind of their humanity
and failings. Not that they have to lay their failings out, but there is, it
takes a real something to not let people worship you if you’re doing some
powerful work. And so I think in that, in ourselves as people who are looking
towards having elders and wise leaders among us, we have to remember that we
still have to bring it into our own process. I mean we’re talking about, at the
end of the day, that part of the practice of becoming our best self and being
of service to the world in a right way is to be able to have that checking in.
And strengthening that, that compass, I guess, of ourself, of our own
priesthood, priestliness.
Anne: 21:54 And
perhaps to remember that it’s a relationship that we are required to
participate in fully, at least equally with any authority that we have granted.
And so that we have to continually be checking them and making sure that they
are also doing the work to deserve that authority.
Thea: 22:24 Right.
That we don’t hand it over blindly.
Anne: 22:27 Yeah.
Or get lazy after we’ve handed it over consciously, but then over time it’s
very easy to get lazy. So, I’m not sure what we’ve concluded on this one, but
it was a good exploration.
Thea: 22:47 Well,
it is. And I think that the one other thing I’d love to add to it though is
that in order for us to be our own guides and authorities or then even in equal
relationship to those that can offer that to us, is to have those spaces just
being in nature too. Because we were talking a little bit, and I won’t go into
it, but talking about creating places of worship or places that are Holy, and
nature is one of those that we all have. To make an effort when we’re living in
cities to be in that because it gives us that sense of connection, like a
direct line. I mean, that’s my experience of it anyway. You know, and it
charges that, it strengthens that current in us as people.
Anne: 23:47 Yes,
it is very grounding. It is the grounding, I think.
Thea: 23:51 And
uplifting. It’s grounding. I mean, it’s the whole thing. It’s like we become
clearer to be able to perceive what is there.
Anne: 24:00 Truth.
Truth. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Okay. Let’s end on that. I mean, you
know, you can’t go wrong with advising that people spend more time in nature.
That is, there is the quiet, there is the reverence automatically or just laid
out there for us. Right? It is creation.
Thea: 24:25 Creation.
Observation. I mean, when I think of the things I want to practice more, it’s
that, that quiet observation and I mean, observing anything in its natural
state is a good exercise.
Anne: 24:40 Yeah.
It’s a good reference point. Going back to references, right? Drake, it’s
resetting in nature and seeing this unadulterated creation gives us some
perspective to bring back into our manmade world to check it, to see if it kind
of stands up to truth.
Drake: 25:06 Right.
And when you were talking about representatives too, right? Like in nature, if
you can look at a natural, any little scene, right? Like a little pocket of
trees in a brook somewhere, it’s kind of in a harmony, right? So you can, you
can look at it as representative of things. Yeah. It does seem like nature
seems to work.
Thea: 25:27 It
does seem to work!
Drake: 25:29 When
left to its own devices. So when you were talking about priests as
representatives, and then we were talking about elders as representatives, to
just kind of look at these things as examples or exemplary of something good
that we might want to emulate, that seems like a path that it can take as well.
Anne: 25:45 Yes,
what, and that, that nature and being there in nature and witnessing all of
that perfection we can see that pattern and want to find that particular
beautiful, perfect pattern in at least the ideals of those that we grant
authority to?
Thea: 26:17 And
even then in relationship, right? In the dynamics of relationship and the way
relating is happening, those dynamics of nature, the balance. Am I losing
something here? Maybe?
Anne: 26:31 We’re
just, we’re just getting very abstract here, but yeah. Okay. All right. All
right. Let’s cut it here and we’ll continue this dialogue in another one at
some point. Thanks you guys.
Thea: 26:45 Thanks.
Love you.
Anne: 26:46 Hold
on one sec. Love you. Hang on one minute.
To move beyond the limited options of agnostic spirituality, atheism, or fundamentalist religion––we need to talk about it. And before we can talk about it, we need to think about it.
Sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason discuss––with new guest Drake Mason-Koehler.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:01 Okay. Here we are with a new guest Drake Mason-Koehler, my nephew, first and foremost Thea’s son. He’s home on break and he’s going to join the discussion. We’ve been having chats, discussions as we always do about some of the subjects that we’ve been talking about. And today we’re going to talk about God. And we’ve had a few discussions about this already, so we’re going to try to kind of just hit a couple of the points and go from there. I have lamented to these guys that––I live up in the Bay area in California and I don’t think people talk enough about God. I think that God, discussions about God, is met kind of with derision and suspicion. There is an atheist tendency up here and an emphasis on secularism that I think is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Anne: 01:10 And
I say this as someone who has gone through myriad perspectives and explorations
and examinations. I was not raised in any particular clear tradition really.
And I’ve come to my own faith very experientially. And as anyone who is
familiar with Anthroposophy––I’m a homeschooler who follows a Waldorf
Anthroposophic curriculum and Drake was raised in the Waldorf schools, Thea
teaches in the Waldorf schools––we understand that religion, from the
Anthroposophic perspective, all religions are valid and are a manifestation and
expression of the consciousness of the time, the evolution of humanity. And no
religion is regarded as––even the ancient myths––they’re not regarded as fables
or misunderstandings, but an understanding of our connection to our source at
the time. So that being said you know, both Drake and Thea brought some
interesting points up. Drake, can you talk a little about your experience being
raised in Southern California?
Drake: 02:37 Yeah.
Well, and this is because we’ve spoken about this a couple of times now. Just
recalling that when you, initially were talking about the atheism that you’ve
run into up in the Bay area, just in your experience, my immediate sort of
complement to that growing up in Southern California ––and although I went to a
school where we learned old Testament myths or old Testament stories in third
grade, along with all the Greek and Norse and other myths that were part of the
curriculum––I still have grown up with so much agnosticism and not even just
agnosticism, but spiritual tendencies in the adults around me and gradually in
many of my peers as well. And not that I think that’s necessarily a bad thing,
but when it comes to discussions about God, I think that that led me to not
even really start thinking about God until just towards the end of high school.
And more lately.
Anne: 03:45 Can
I interrupt you just so that you can make it clear? I think what you’re saying
is when you, when you talk about this kind of agnostic spiritualism or
spirituality, sorry, you’re referring to a kind of nebulous spirituality that
doesn’t follow any, certainly any organized religion or firm tradition. Yeah?
Drake: 04:11 I
feel like I’ve run into a lot of that. And then also a lot of, “well, I
just don’t know. And I’m also not really interested in having a discussion
about what I don’t know or what I do know.” So it’s kind of maybe, I don’t
know what the, what the split would look like in terms of people who are going,
you know, “I’m spiritual. This is my belief which is kind of hard to put
your finger on exactly what it is. But they might, you know, hold it very
precious and that might be very good for them. But I think the emphasis of my
point would be that there hasn’t really been much on either end of the
spectrum. I haven’t known a lot of people who are very religious and I haven’t
known a lot of people who are very clear cut in their atheism. It’s all been
somewhere in between. And the majority of that in between has also seen an
unwillingness to stop and talk about it or to think about it because I think
the thinking about before the talking about it. So, yeah, that was, that’s kind
of where I came into this discussion.
Thea: 05:10 And
that came after also you articulating that we grew up in the Midwest where
there were a lot of very fundamental religions around us. And while that was
around us, we didn’t grow up with that in our home. Ours was sort of a
nondescript sense of God and faith, but not any clear delineated path within
that I guess.
Anne: 05:35 Yes.
We were raised by liberal academics so who were as you point out, I’ll let you
speak to this, but I think who were, as many people from that generation,
turned off to the hypocrisy of the organized religion that they had grown up
around or even with.
Thea: 06:02 Like,
like a lack of breathing within it. I think, you know, I mean, and that was
mirrored in a lot of aspects of the culture, too. I mean, the religious aspect
kind of, and the structure and strictures of life in this country. I mean, just
thinking of the social changes that were occurring in the fifties, sixties, you
know, so all of that was a reflection of all of it in a way, too. And so there
was this pushing away from that hard and fast structure and form because of the
many injustices that were seen and condoned by religious practices one way or
another. And that’s throughout all of history.
Drake: 06:47 I
remember, Anne, yesterday you were talking a little bit about sort of pendulum
swings, like going all the way to the other end of an extreme. So wherever you
might grow up you might go the other way, like both of you guys growing up in
the Midwest and then coming out to California where it’s a very different
consciousness than what you grew up in when it comes to spirituality and God.
And my follow up thought to that has been, well, what if you grow up where it’s
all agnostic? What if you grow up where there’s no, you’re not at any extreme
to swing from. Right? You don’t have that, like, trajectory to go look for.
Right? ‘Cause I think, needless to say, we live in a world where, you know, if
you’re so blessed that you have the opportunity to, to go to college or to go
and work in our world you get to forge your own path and you’re talking about
this kind of like forging your own religion or your own outlook on religion or
spirituality, whatever that might be.
Anne: 07:51 Okay.
We had a little technical difficulty. So Drake, would you just start from, you
were talking about, you know, for those of us who are blessed to forge our own
path I mean blessed to go to college, to forge our own path, that allows us
to…go ahead.
Drake: 08:09 Well,
I was thinking even just looking back at the beginning of this discussion, you
said your approach to religion or spirituality has been very experiential,
right? Like throughout your life, it’s changed or you’ve done work with it
based on your own experiences and what you’ve read, who you’ve talked to and
where you’ve been. And I think similar for you. So those are kind of like
individual trajectories that you guys have had and you’ve been able to come out
from your upbringing growing up in a more religious place, a different type of
environment, and then sort of forge your own way. So it almost, it seems like
that upbringing gave you a momentum, and I know it wasn’t like, you didn’t grow
up like super strict Catholic or anything like that. Also people don’t have to
escape it, like they don’t have to swing away from it, but it seems like when
it comes to coming to your own understanding of something or your own beliefs
where do you get that movement that would make you want to establish beliefs in
the first place? Is it just life happening to you that makes you want to,
“okay, I need to figure out, you know, what I believe is right and wrong?
How I think about children, marriage, grief, like all these other things and
scriptures and religion has a lot to say on that. And it’s not necessarily all you
need to be followed, but there’s a lot of good in it too.
Thea: 09:34 Yeah.
Well I don’t know if my thought quite follows precisely. I mean it still is in
there, but it gives me a picture of, you know, he was speaking about the
pendulum, that swinging and you were talking about earlier the streams. And
with that pendulum swing you have this momentum kind of like you’re shot out of
something, you know, so you have this force carrying you one way or another.
And then I was thinking that when there’s this sort of work that’s coming from
your individual experiences, it’s a little bit more like picking up a shovel
and digging, and you don’t want to be too far from the stream ’cause you still
need the current if you’re trying to create a channel. But it just gave me the
picture, ’cause today we went for a walk and it rained a lot last night. So
this path was just flooded and there were so many streams flowing. And I’m just
thinking that sometimes to forge a new stream, you know, you do have to pick up
a shovel for a bit and then it can kind of be filled in and have some of that
carrying from, not the pendulum, but just from the movement of the stream
itself. So that you can kind of, I don’t know, it’s not quite there, but a
picture that came with that.
Anne: 10:51 Well
so drawing both on our conversation from yesterday and what you just, you both
just said. So we talked a little bit about the fact that like, for example, especially
the last couple of generations in this country, given the nature of the economy
and the world more and more often people leave the places they grew up in,
leave the traditions, the families intermarry, live abroad, live on the other
side of the country. Meet, mingle and marry people who have come from widely
different backgrounds. And so one is exposed to many different streams and
traditions. At the same time, like Drake brings up scripture and these
traditions that have come up throughout humanity’s development, understanding
and need to figure out ways, codes guidelines and guideposts, those are also
valuable. And the flip side of us all moving away and finding new streams is,
the downside is that we also sometimes lose and abandon that which came before
us. So I think that we kind of concluded when we were talking yesterday that
what we’re starting to realize is that there needs to be––so we’re, we’re
entering the age of Aquarius. I think I brought up the fact that, you know, as
I see it, each epoch is about 2000 years long. And so we’ve come to that end of
our current form of Christianity––do we need, I mean, I’m talking about in the
Western tradition because we’ve all grown up in the Western tradition, so
that’s all I can really speak to, right? So is what we’re seeing around us is
that indicating a need to create a new stream, a new path that perhaps for the
first time in recent human history is informed by our individualism as equally,
if not more than our group…What’s, what’s the word I’m looking for, Drake?
Drake: 13:53 I
don’t know. Like our need for community or something like that?
Anne: 13:57 Well,
you know, we need, we need community, right? But, well, Thea and I had done a
talk a while back on claiming our authority and we emphasized the fact
that––certainly for us, we see the need to we have lived and, and strived to,
be our own authority, rather than look to the experts, rather than look to the
doctors the lawyers, the teachers, the priests. Not that that means we reject
what they have to offer, but I will put my authority above them all in my final
decisions about anything. And I think that this, there is a lot of that, there
is a lot of that impulse in people and they’re finding that groove in different
ways. Maybe one of them is simply and embrace of atheism, because they are
rejecting everything that came before them. Because they’re saying, no, that
didn’t work. But perhaps what needs to happen is we need to find something that
doesn’t then throw the baby out with the bath water. Because we are spiritual
beans, which I will say again only for my own personal, my own experience, but
I believe we are spiritual beings or we have a spiritual impulse, a
spirituality and we do need to speak to that. And materialism, reductivist
materialism, doesn’t answer that need in us.
Thea: 15:48 Well
it doesn’t hold the space for that mystery that is always present in some way.
But I’d like to go back just a moment, ’cause I think there was something you
said yesterday in our conversation that was really important to distinguish
when we’re talking about this sort of age of coming into this individual sense
of seeing. I want to find a better way to say it. It is reclaiming our
authority or claiming our authority, but also really the honoring of our own
seeing is part of that. But what you said yesterday, was there’s a difference
between individualism that is just self-serving and sort of narcissistic, as
opposed to a group of individuals coming together––I mean maybe you want to say
it––as opposed to a group of people who are all thinking the same or don’t have
their own responsibility of self quite there. But when everyone is an
individual and their work has been done through themselves to come to where
they are, there’s more power in that group of people working together towards a
shared goal than there is in a group of people following someone with a
somewhat shared goal.
Anne: 17:13 So,
basically that, you know, there’s a difference between a group of individuals
bringing their own unique skills, talents, perspectives, experience to the
table toward a, a shared goal––the evolution of humanity, let’s say
that––versus a collective of group think that is following one idea and path.
And so I think the way we concluded, and we want to wrap it up just to keep
this short, but we want to keep this going, I think, this is a good start. I
think what we determined perhaps is that there’s gotta be, there has to be
another path now. And so, you know, there’s, there’s a path beyond just the
choices of atheism, fundamental religion, nebulous, agnostic, spirituality.
Something else maybe needs to emerge and be formed. And new language must be
found for a new, experiential understanding of God, or our connection to source,
whatever that is for you. And the way to do that is to start talking about it
more.
Thea: 18:28 Thinking
about it.
Anne: 18:29 Well
exactly. Like Drake says, you have to first want to even think about it before
you can want to start talking about it.
Thea: 18:36 Well,
and then that’s where the conversations come ’cause you have to show up, you
have to show up for the––now I’m thinking of baseball––show up for the game.
You know, you have to be able to stand at the plate and be like, yeah, let’s
bring this discussion up. Let’s bring this topic.
Drake: 18:50 Yeah,
’cause I was going to say, if you don’t––and it can be totally reasonable to
not want to be thinking about these things at certain times. But if you’re not
wanting to think about it and people start, you know, asking you questions,
pointed questions about your beliefs or what you think and presenting you with
what they think and all of that. It can feel like an attack or sort of like a
barrage of something coming in at you. And if you haven’t even wanted to start
thinking about it, I mean it’s going to feel weird. It feels like people are
trying to get you to think like them. Which is I think why discussions about
this stuff can be like…it’s so vulnerable. It’s so vulnerable for people to
say what they believe or that they don’t know what they believe and they’re
like, it feels like it’s a difficult thing to get past that before you say, I
want to figure out something for myself, whatever that might be. Because when
you were talking about materialists, I mean, I feel like, there’s so many
different types of people and there’s so much out there in terms of what people
have thought about these things. Like, I know there are ancient authors that I
haven’t read yet that don’t believe in God, but have a system of morals and
ways of thinking about things that is beautiful and can totally work for
someone to read and think about and be inspired and not necessarily adopted as
a sort of creed, but to feed into their own understanding of what their work in
the world is. So it’s like, yeah, starting to think about it.
Thea: 20:27 Yeah,
and if this ties in just a little bit. Yesterday we had briefly spoken about
this, which led to that reflection you had about the normalcy of leaving one’s,
place of birth and upbringing. And that came after us speaking about Arjuna and
his quest towards his seeing…
Anne: 20:52 For
anyone who doesn’t know what you’re referring to. Arjuna from the Mahabharata
epic tale of ancient India, right. As Krishna’s talking to him too, right?
Drake: 21:04 Yeah.
He’s about to, if I recall correctly, I think he’s about to fight his own
family, he’s about to fight, you know, half of his family members and he’s
like, how, how am I supposed to reconcile myself to this? Then I was
remembering from, I think it’s Matthew in the Bible where Jesus says that he’s
coming to take, you know, son from father and daughter from mother or something
along those lines.
Thea: 21:30 So
those pictures of having to let go of that which is familiar, to forge one’s
own path with honor and truth and dignity. And that is, you know, there’s a
part that’s necessary to throw off these things so you can see what’s sort of
left standing. And I feel like maybe that’s what epoch we are stepping into
now. It’s like, what, what’s left standing? What is there, something that we
can really protect and nurture and grow for humanity from this point? And what is
that relationship with God, source, a structure of morals.
Drake: 22:12 Well
also all these situations that we keep bringing up, it seems like there’s
something to do with, when you run into like, contradictions, like very
irreconcilable things like Arjuna having to fight his family and wanting to be
a virtuous person. Those seem to be impossible to reconcile those two things.
So it’s like, what does he do in that situation? And whether you want to do
exactly what he does is beside the point, but just getting to see what other
people do in these stories? And if that leads to conversation too, with other
people like, “Oh, what did they do when they ran into a super sticky moral
scenario? Where did they turn? How did they get through it in a way that they
thought benefited themselves and others?
Thea: 23:01 Where
the seemingly obvious gentle, compassionate route is actually the cowardly,
unhonorable or dishonorable route. Not to not have compassion. That’s not what
I’m trying to say, but what seems to be a general kindness may not truly be a
kindness.
Anne: 23:20 Absolutely.
And, and the only way to really kind of push through those kind of black and
white choices, and push through to, to understand, embrace the complexity, but
still take action, one has to examine and explore that. And I think what Drake
has brought up to some degree speaks to the fact that we should not throw all
of that out in forging our new path, but take that, benefit from everyone’s
experience from history, humanity’s experience. Take it, examine it, discuss
it, discard, try it, try something different. And then form something new.
Correct?
Drake: 24:17 Yeah.
I mean, it just seems like we’re going to have to take action, no matter what.
Right? We can’t just hide in our rooms forever. We’re going to have to go do
things. And so it seems like it might help us make better decisions as opposed
to just going, “I don’t know.” ‘Cause if you just say, “I don’t
know,” you’re going to find yourself in situations where you have to do
things, anyway. So, at least trying to know might…
Anne: 24:48 Because
you can sit in your room or you can sit in your community, and you can say it’s
all good and you know, and decide to not make a decision toward judgment, which
leads to action. But if you do that, the world is going to eventually exert its
influence on you and you’re going to have to then react. So let’s get out in
front of it. Let’s start talking about this more in a new way and find some new
language and new concepts to examine and discuss and go from there.
Thea: 25:31 And
I would even just say maybe they’re not new concepts, right? But maybe we do
need to find a new language so that those old concepts that are probably
timeless and ever present just need to be understood and digested and reused in
a way that we can understand now more easily.
Anne: 25:54 Because
truth is eternal, right? So truth is eternal, but our consciousness is ever
changing. And so we need to develop some new understandings, I think, in order
to incorporate those truths and most beautifully, powerfully, and positively
manifest them going forward into this new age. Into the Age of the Fifth Sun.
So let’s wrap this up. It’s getting too long, but let’s keep going. Okay? All
right. Thanks you guys.
To support one who is grieving, simply allow them to be––to be a mess, to be demolished, to be in grief. And to not be the same person you knew them to be before the grief. Because they are not––and they never will be again. And if you are the one grieving, honor yourself and your loss by allowing that in yourself.
Grief “veterans” sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason discuss.
Anne’s article describing her personal experience with loss and grief was written and published a few years after the death of their parents in 2002, 11 days apart. It was recently republished again this year in Grief Digest Magazine, entitled Responding to Life.
**UPDATE 6/9/23––I was recently introduced to this guide for those who’ve experienced or are experiencing grief. I found it wonderfully clarifying, nuanced, insightful and helpful. I hope it can be of help to others: https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/grief/
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:01 Okay.
So Thea and I are going to talk a little bit more about grief. We feel we’re
still, we’re feeling that thread still of grief and we were just reflecting in
a conversation we were just having on the fact that it’s probably partly the
season. Our father had passed at the end of October and then our mother, 11––I
never remember 11, 13 days later, whatever it was in the early November…
Thea: 00:32 Eleven.
Anne: 00:32 Eleven
days. And one thing I wanted to qualify is that the reason that I think we’re
talking about this as if we have a great deal of experience with kind of
intense grief is that part of it was the experience of caretaking our parents
from brain illness and injury over the course of some years. So it was very,
very intense, you know, when people lose the brains, basically, that’s an
intense process of caretaking. And then it happening when we were a lot
younger.
Thea: 01:20 It’s
almost at 20 years, I mean we’re going toward 20 years now.
Anne: 01:27 And
then, and then happening within the space of two weeks. So that was just all
intense, very intense and very magnified. So that’s partly why we are wanting
to convey what helped. We were just reflecting on the fact that if it happened
now, of course it would still be intense, but not as intense. So, we want to
talk a little bit about what helped us during that time practically. And I was
reflecting with Thea on the fact that one of the things I did during that,
especially that first year after it all happened and I was going through the
motions of life and work and dealing with the estate and all of these things, I
started drinking cream in my coffee where I had drunk black coffee before that.
But just to, to get out of bed and go to work, which was like, felt like it
required sometimes superhuman capacity. I started drinking cream in my coffee.
I started taking baths again. And I had lived in London, years before where
everybody takes baths and I had gone back to taking showers here in the States.
But I started taking baths, because it felt more nurturing. It was softer. It
was gentler. I started doing yoga a little bit, and as Thea can vouch for, I’m
not a yoga person, but I started doing yoga in the mornings. I had this funky
VHS tape that I had inherited from Thea or something, and I would do this 20
minute yoga thing in the morning and it nurtured me. It helped me. I also look
back on that time and realize, you know, I cocooned a lot and it’s kind of
against my nature, to be so insular, you know, I’m pretty out there, but I was
alone a lot. I wanted to be alone a lot. And I drank a lot. I wept a lot. I
cried a lot. And, and I remember at the time, friends, people close to me, kind
of trying to encourage me to get out of that, “Come on, you know, this
isn’t you!” and being kind of at odds with that, like, “Oh, this is
not me. What, what’s going on? What am I doing here? What am I doing?” And
I wish I had had the sense that I knew best and the sense to just allow that
process to happen without trying to force anything.
Thea: 04:34 Well
if I can chime in to that. This reminds me of the thought I had had when we
were chatting a little bit ago was that it wasn’t you. And like we touched on
last time, that there is that darkened space that we go into and we do––
allowing, allowing for that darkened space and time to occur like a cocoon. We
do come out something else. We become something else. We develop, we grow, we
change. But I just wanted to remark, because I don’t think I’ve thought of it
this way before, was that when someone that we love and make connections with
in this life leaves this world, the world is altered and therefore those that
are closely tied to that person do truly change because they fill the space
differently to be able to continue. And you know, when it is a connection that
is like one of those of loved people in our lives, it does alter us and we do
become something not ourselves while we’re in transformation. And I think even
just stating that if that, if that knowledge was more apparent for those people
who are supporting the grieving people that they will be different, and it’s
not really a helpful thing to convey.
Thea: 06:04 You’re
not yourself. No shit, you know? You won’t be, you know, I will be picking up
different threads of myself, but I’m weaving a new fabric. While I’m in this
cocoon. You know, we are changing. So if there’s a little more intelligence
about that process for people who are going through grief maybe or those that
are going through it, our own knowledge that we’re going to be different and
allowing for that without the guilt game of I’m not being myself for these people
in my life. I don’t know if I’ve gone too far astray, but I think that’s what
you’re speaking to. Wishing you had known that, you know best like listening to
that inner voice again that is asking you to do something different, you know,
is, is really valuable.
Anne: 06:55 Yes,
it’s definitely valuable. And it’s, and it’s good to talk to other people who
have been through it as we did, you know, over time. I also went to a grief
counselor. First time I had really done any therapy or any kind of thing like
that, and it was helpful for sure, to have that validated. I think that’s an important
thing to point out to others too though, who are there to try to, or those were
trying to hold it for someone else. Trying to support someone who’s going
through the grieving process. W.
Thea: 07:33 Which
is really a hard position.
Anne: 07:36 It
is. And I’ve read about this recently too, where people don’t know what to say.
They don’t know what to do. People who have not been there really don’t know.
And I think it’s important to just let those folks know that I think that all
anyone is…You know, when you’re grieving that deeply. And one other thing I
wanted to point out is like, you know, a friend had communicated recently about
it, who had lost her son recently and that, as I said to her, I can’t even
touch that, right? That’s, that’s many layers beyond. But what I can say is I,
I just, you know, I just send you my love, you know, I give you my love and,
and I grieve for you and with you, right? You know, you can say, I’m sorry for
your loss or whatever, but you know, I always, I found all that platitudinal
stuff kind of like, just, just be real. And just to know that that person,
honor that person by allowing them to just be going through that phase that
you’re describing, their transformation. They are not going to be what you
know, they’re not going to be what you are used to, and they’re probably never
going to be that again.
Thea: 09:18 That’s
huge.
Anne: 09:20 So
to, to accept that and encourage them in that rather than make them feel as if
they’re doing something wrong. Right?
Thea: 09:30 Right.
Yeah. I think what you’re speaking to also, and I, you know, when I look back
at people in my life when they’ve been going through their own grief and it’s
like, you know, we don’t want to say “I’m sorry for your loss” while
you are, is, depending on the nature of your relationship is a little bit like
“I’m here and I can relate and I’m here.” But we can’t, there’s not
much else. There’s not much else we can really offer.
Anne: 10:02 Yeah,
we can’t. That’s the thing. We can’t fix it. We can’t give them anything. We
can just hold that space for them to just be and to be demolished too. We can
hold the space for them to be demolished. To be all over the floor. To be a
mess. Let them be a mess. You know? And that’s what you and I spoke about a
little bit too. It’s like, you had used the word, I don’t think you said this
in the video, but you said, there was a part of you that, because the fabric of
reality had torn open…
Thea: 10:42 Or
altered.
Anne: 10:42 Altered.
There was a tear in it. (You Said), “It didn’t fit, it no longer fit. Your
life didn’t quite fit anymore.” So that’s something that we become aware
of more in any heightened state, I think.
Thea: 11:03 Right.
That you’re actually growing into a new way of being. When there has been an
alteration to the reality you’ve been engaging with. So allowing for that
growth and that shift and that discomfort. Kind of like if you have a new pair
of shoes, they take a bit to wear into the shape of your foot, right? Or your,
when you get used to a good pair of jeans. At first they didn’t feel so good,
but that takes a little bit of time and then you fit them right and they, you
fit them and they fit you. But it all takes a little discomfort for awhile.
Anne: 11:43 Or
more than that though I would say. I mean, I like your, your clothing
analogy––as anyone knows, Thea’s style and her clothes and her relationship to
clothes, it’s appropriate. For me on the other hand, like when we were talking
about the mess and, and being demolished on the floor––I think also give
yourself a break. And give anyone who’s going through this a break to, to
really screw up too in a way. Like make some, make some big mistakes.
Thea: 12:22 Which
I think we all, we all did.
Anne: 12:25 We
all did, you know, and it was challenging and hard. But also it’s like we had
to break some things. In order to then allow that new thing to form. We had to
break it down. Say that again.
Thea: 12:47 A
new emergence, like of oneself. Out of it. To break down ideas that we had
about ourselves that were held, I mean, in our situation, it being our parents,
that’s a different dynamic than a friend or a lover or a child. So different
things we had to break down to free ourselves even.
Anne: 13:10 Yeah.
I put it as, you know, we went a little crazy and that was okay. Because we
only went so crazy. We kept things going, but we went a little crazy. And then
we came back from the crazy.
Thea: 13:32 The
edges, I call it the edges. A little bit. Because we weren’t out of our heads,
I mean, we weren’t disconnected with what we were doing. We were really pretty
aware of the choices we were making in most of those moments. They were big but
we, we pushed past our edges maybe that we had kept ourselves in before. And I,
you know, I think what you said just about that, that initial time of intense
grief, it’s like finding whatever it is that is some sort of ritual for
you––cream in your coffee, baths, walks, talks, whatever––those little things
that can hold so much power. Lighting a candle, you know, I mean, I’m just
giving little things, making your, you know, whatever. I’m like thinking like
my shoe rack, little things that I could make really neat and orderly that
brought me joy because everything felt…
Anne: 14:32 And
tethering, right? It was a tethering, so whatever, you know, finding your
little rituals of tethering. To tether you while you also are flailing at the
same time through that.
Thea: 14:48 And
one more thing. I don’t know if this ties anything in, but I think there’s
those, those pictures that when you’re sharing of your sort of cocooning, and I
was saying a little bit of that spiraling inward because you tend to be more
outward and I, I don’t think I’ve put this together quite yet until now. I tend
to be a little more inward in many ways and I think in that period I was so
busy teaching and practicing, I kind of did the opposite.
Anne: 15:19 And
parenting. Yeah, you did.
Thea: 15:19 I
went out a little bit more than I normally would be. So that’s curious. I don’t
think I’d seen that until now.
Anne: 15:30 Yeah,
which pushed this other side of you like this, this other side of me. And
brought us to the wholeness that we are now! I joke!
Thea: 15:41 As
we go through new challenges and edge pushing. My God.
Anne: 15:49 Absolutely.
Absolutely. As we’re, yeah. As we are both going through other changes, and
we’ve also just reflected on the fact that having gone through that intensity
in our earlier years and, and then becoming accustomed to cycles and cycles of
grief does inform you to become accustomed to all cycles and that they do move
and they’re waves, and it moves in and out. And if you just kind of tether
yourself while you get through that, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Thea: 16:23 Yeah.
Thanks.
Anne: 16:25 There
we go. As nonlinear is all that was. Hopefully that’s, that’s something and
something. And Happy holidays to all the grieving people out there, because I
know this brings it up as it does the winter and all of that. Right? So, all
right.
Grief can seem indescribably unbearable. But it gets easier, we promise. And it can transform and give birth to something positive––and widen, deepen and enrich our capacity and wisdom as we move through life.
Sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason speak from experience.
Anne’s article describing her personal experience with loss and grief was written and published a few years after the death of their parents in 2002, 11 days apart. It was recently republished again this year in Grief Digest Magazine, entitled Responding to Life.
**UPDATE 6/9/23––I was recently introduced to this guide for those who’ve experienced or are experiencing grief. I found it wonderfully clarifying, nuanced, insightful and helpful. I hope it can be of help to others: https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/grief/.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:00 Okay,
we’re recording. Okay. So we’re going to talk about grief today. And to inform
anyone listening. Thea and I both, and our sisters, lost both of our parents at
the end of 2002 after they both suffered pretty horrific, devastating brain
injuries and illnesses. Our mother from brain cancer at the young age of 52,
and our father from a brain injury following other health problems at the age
of 62. So that was pretty intense as anyone can imagine. Tt was not just the
loss, but also the years leading to the loss and how excruciating that was to
witness.
Thea: 01:07 And
the 11 days apart, you know, and the, the compact “pow” of the loss.
Anne: 01:10 Yeah.
It was. And, you know, I was Mom’s primary caretaker. She was not remarried.
Thea, she already had a family. So she also had a young child and she was
flying back, taking care of things as well. Then my dad’s secondary caretaker.
So it was just, it was so intense, right? As anyone who’s gone through loss
understands. And so we’ve been talking about this and I’ll post a link to the
article too that by chance I discovered––there was an article I had written
really not long after they died, but then I kind of held onto it and submitted
it for publication a few years later. So it was published about a decade ago
and it was just recently republished this year. So the first thing I think we
would like to talk about is to acknowledge for anyone who is suffering and in
grief grieving, going through the grieving process, that we get it so much and
that it is an experience that one cannot really convey or describe really,
unless you’ve stepped through that door. And we’re aware of the fact that the
world does not see or acknowledge what you are going through as you are walking
through your day to day life, trying to just cope with an unbearable,
indescribable pain. You know, I mean, it makes me want to cry when I’m––I don’t
know why I’m in touch with it recently. And that is the weird thing about
grief, it is always there, but it gets much more manageable and it transforms
and there’s a beauty. There is as much beauty to the pain as there is the pain,
I think over time, you know? And so yeah, you know, a couple of friends of mine
have just suffered very close losses. So that’s been a topic we were just
talking about.
Anne: 03:44 Ricky
Gervais’ After Life––it’s a new Netflix series and it’s remarkable. It’s
extraordinary. His comprehension, his understanding of grief and his ability to
portray it. It’s very good. I highly recommend it. So, I think what we want to
talk about a little bit right now is, and let’s look at our time. As we had been
talking about even in last week’s conversation, which we entitled Responding to
Change and many other of our conversations have been kind of in keeping with
this theme of our responses to what life presents, right, and how impactful it
is. How our response to what comes obviously significantly influences our
life’s experience. And others’, you know, in this case with grief, others’
response to what we are going through is also impactful. And that article I
wrote about touched on how the lack of our society’s observance of grief, of
what people are going through. There is as I had written in the article,
there’s a short period of time where your loss is formally acknowledged, but
maybe it’s our busy world, our busy society, our busy everyday hectic pace. I’m
not sure what it is. I also think there’s something unhealthy in the way we
cope. I think there is some times a sense of putting on a face. I think there’s
a sense of kind of faking it––that we, that we should, you know, just appear as
if things are okay.
Thea: 06:10 If
it doesn’t interrupt your thought too much, I think there’s something that I’m
seeing when we’re articulating it is––your article says so eloquently really
how you’re given this space and time, brief period of time where it’s
acknowledged and then it kind of just slips away, but you’re still holding it.
And that’s really the time where the burden gets heavier. And because the
shock, depending on what grief stages or how it comes to someone, you know,
ours was, I can speak from that experience. That was, it was just so intense.
And, and because it was so intense for us, I felt like, you know, everything
was blown apart, all of our reality in a certain way. So, so taking us to our
knees that the only thing that could come through was grace. Like it carried us
through the horrificness of it in a way. And then after the shocking part sort
of starts to wear off, that’s when the new stages of that grief start to come
in, in a more thunderous way in a sense. And what I’m seeing in this though is
like, different cultures have different observances. You know, maybe you wear
black for a year or whatever it is because it really does take that length of
time. And our culture–we don’t do that so much in any real way.
Thea: 07:48 But
what I’m seeing is that we have the observance for this short period, and then
you have the funeral or the celebration of life or whatever it is, but it’s
like boom, boom, boom. And it’s like the meaning again is getting lost and it’s
the image rather than the essence. Even the advice that you’re given through
grief counselors to not make any big changes, which you speak to really well in
the article, but it’s again, it’s like it gets lost. The words, the meaning,
the intent, the impulse that’s sound gets distorted. And then it’s like you’re
standing in nothingness.
Anne: 08:31 It’s,
you know I remember how I worded it and I don’t want to repeat exactly how I
worded it, but basically it’s cautioning us, right? To not be reactive. To not
be reactionary, maybe is a better way of putting it. But in so doing, it’s kind
of throwing the baby out with the bath water. So yes, we should not, it’s
helpful in life to not react impulsively without thought, without care. But
that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respond. Right? And that we shouldn’t act upon
the process that we’re going through that we shouldn’t act upon some of the
instincts or the awarenesses or changes that it’s bringing up in us. Right? So
that’s one thing I think that it goes hand in hand with the way the culture
observes our loss as well. It’s true that we have to get on with it. Right?
And, you know, I remember in the midst of it, and I have since kind of lamented
how challenging it is with a death. So the person who’s been caretaking
experiencing incredible loss after they’re already exhausted from the
caretaking, and then they’ve got to do all this other stuff after the death,
all the legal stuff, all of the you know, the estate situation.
Thea: 10:21 The
business part.
Anne: 10:26 The
business of it. But, there is also something necessary in that because it keeps
you moving, you know, and there is a tethering there, as unpleasant as it is,
so that you don’t kind of go off the deep end. Not to say that one doesn’t at
times go off the deep end. And I would say I, you know, those first couple of
years were almost debilitating. Right? I mean, it was just, you know, I drank a
lot, you know, and I sheltered myself a lot. I did go through the motions and I
did what I absolutely had to do. But other than that, you know, it was, it was
rough as you know.
Thea: 11:16 And
I know that too. You know, I think so much of the way grief comes to us or what
we’re given through it–– knowing that I had a child to take care of, it
minimized the spaces I could even go into. So they kind of came in a softer
current over years because I had a living proof purpose that I had to keep
going for. Right? And that changes things.
Anne: 11:46 Yeah.
Totally. You couldn’t, you couldn’t fall down. Right? And so that also means
that probably it may have lingered longer. Your process may have just been
elongated you know, but who’s to say? Right? Cause it’s still, I mean, there
are still times, once in a great while, I will like, I’ll weep. Right?
Thea: 12:11 I
know. Yeah.
Anne: 12:11 But
also you know, on the flip side, for anyone going through it, God, I mean, as
devastating and difficult as it’s been, I’m grateful to them for the gift that
they gave us in that. I would not be who I am. I would not be the mother I am.
I would not be…There’s so much that it deepened in our experience, right, to
have gone through that. So there’s some good stuff that comes from it, you
know, with all of life’s, you know I mean it’s cliche again, but the deeper the
suffering, the deeper the experience, the deeper the wisdom I think.
Thea: 13:13 Right.
And that goes, we spoke just for a moment beforehand is like, yeah, as, we love
more, as we grieve more and feel the depths and breadths, and all the angles
and spaces of feeling––I mean these are the things that make us really human.
It allows, I mean, I feel for myself, it’s allowed me to become a bigger
person, more able to meet more people where they are. The more experiences I
have, the wisdom, right? The more that there is a reflection within me to
another, the more we share, the more we connect, the more we serve our purpose
being here on Earth.
Anne: 14:00 Oh
gosh. And it reminds me of a comment a friend made on my Facebook page when I
had just posted that this article got republished. And she had lost her mom.
And she said, you know, it makes one aware, it’s a reminder that we don’t ever
know what anyone else is going through as they’re walking through. Right? And
so when you’ve gone through this yourself, it brings an awareness to you always
that there are many layers there in everyone. It brings a compassion to I think
one’s interactions with everyone and any one, because you start to reveal or
you start to realize that so much more may be happening, has happened. You have
not walked in their shoes. And that we really, this life, there are few that
escape, you know, sorrow and pain in this life. And so just that awareness and
compassion brings such a dimension to our relationships, our regard for people
and the world really.
Thea: 15:19 Because
within sorrow, I mean, I want to say healthy sorrow, because there’s tragedy
that is like, there feels like a wrongness in, you know, an injustice. But
there’s, when there’s the healthy sorrow, I feel like within that is a real big
seed of what’s beautiful. You know, it brings us to that which is––beauty, you
know, love.
Anne: 15:50 It’s
a sweet sorrow. It’s a sweet sorrow. And it’s like having gone through that
experience, going through this kind of experience and similar experiences, it
definitely, like, it reveals that layer to existence. And we probably should
start looking to wrap it up soon, and I’ll only touch on this now, but I mean,
beyond the deepening, I mean, it’s, you know, I discovered my faith through
that process too. And when I say that, I’m not saying a particular, an
organized religion or denomination or, you know, and as I’ve said to people who
I’ve gotten into discussions about this with, it’s like I feel that it’s much
larger than any one particular organized set of beliefs, but a kind of you
know, an all encompassing understanding connection to my source, connection to
the divine, connection to other realms. And it’s, you know, it’s been a gradual
process for me really since the deaths of my parents. And it’s been an organic,
beautiful thing too. And one that feels very experiential. I remember a friend
of mine who a German friend of mine who, who lives here in California where
it’s really, people don’t talk a lot about God and faith here, in the Bay area,
we’re in the Bay area. There’s almost a disdain for that. Right? And he had
remarked that it has really struck him how I didn’t, I don’t have this from
having been raised in it, you know, ’cause we were raised kind of half assed
Catholic…
Thea: 18:07 But
I would say my experience was there was a sense of intelligence and divinity,
the acknowledgement of God in our life even though it wasn’t through any direct
channel or picture. But that picture that there is, there’s meaning and purpose
and God.
Anne: 18:33 Yeah.
An understanding of there being more than we are seeing. Yeah. Right. More than
is visible. I agree. But, he was remarking that, you know, that it came to me
through experience in this way as opposed to where it’s come through for him
and through practice. But anyway, you know, I won’t get off on a tangent, but
there’s something so beautifully rich in the experience. Go ahead.
Thea: 19:09 Well,
I want to say, I don’t think it’s quite a tangent, but I think it will be a
thread to come back to that we explore a little bit more because I want to
reiterate again in our dialogues that we’re sharing together here. These are
our reflections from our experiences and our understanding of those experiences
and the way we then choose to engage with our life and the world and the people
in our lives. And it’s not so much about is someone testing, has this been
proven? This is through our own experience, which I think, what I want to wrap
it into a little bit is––losing, having our parents move on at our young age,
which felt very young at the time I think removed, I think I said this, I
remember feeling it when, when it was going on, just that when they were gone,
there was no longer any image of a guidance or you know, mother, father,
between myself and God. So my relationship to whatever I call God, source,
whatever, became even more clear and tangible for me because there was nothing
in between it. I didn’t have anything separating it. And I think what that has
brought to me through my own journey and you, is what I perceive is a gift and
for me to do something with. So it’s, it’s like, it’s allowed me to develop
that capacity more and more and more to listen to myself, to listen to what I
Intuit or instinctively respond to. You know, trusting oneself because knowing
oneself is more than just me. Like that there’s wisdom that moves through and
shows itself to me through my experiences. So, yeah.
Anne: 21:14 Absolutely.
Thanks for making that distinction. Thanks for making that distinction. Yeah.
It’s, once again, it’s you know, I’d made this comment recently, but there is
some knowledge, there is, there is information that sometimes cannot be
transferred through language or books or teaching, but only through experience.
Right? It’s when the veil drops, you know, or when we walk through a door. So
anyway, it’s an exclusive club. So anyone who has experienced it, welcome to it
and promise it gets better and there’s so much richness to the experience that
one can be in and does become quite grateful for. And we’ll probably touch on
this more next time.
Thea: 22:09 I
think we should. And I just, there’s one more thing now I have to say that as
you say that there’s more richness. I feel a little bit like it is that
experience, because at first through it, things become more dull and it’s kind
of like you’re going into a cocoon a bit and the veils wrap around you. And
then when you pull yourself back through that, the world is more vibrant again.
It changes. But you do go through a darkness.
Anne: 22:40 You
do, you do. And so do not expect all of a sudden, “Oh you know…”
There is a deadening and a darkness to it at first, but you have to go through
that to come out to a brighter light.
Thea: 22:54 Yeah.
Well thank you so much. I look forward to us talking more about it ’cause
there’s so, so many other spaces within it for us to, you know, think about it
as the culture of how to alter and change and support or develop new ways or
old ways to honor the grieving process when each individual goes through it. So
it can be a transformative space that’s recognized and really honored.
Anne: 23:26 Yes,
I agree. All right, we’ll think on that.
Our response to challenge and change is informed by our perspective––are we part of an infinitely complex, purposeful design or is our existence merely accidental?
Sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason examine and discuss. Holiday style and in person:)
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Anne: 00:00 Recording to the cloud.
So we’re doing this a little differently this time because Thea’s here, we’re
hanging out, and we’re very relaxed here in a circle of redwoods. So what we’ve
been talking about is how we respond to change, responding to change,
responding to challenges, obstacles that life presents us with and recognizing
that something helpful to inform one’s experience in reacting to change is to
recognize that this is either intended to be a school or there’s certainly
opportunities to learn and grow from these experiences and that it makes it
much easier to move through without resistance, as much resistance––or to move
through with more grace, to move through with a focus on understanding the
experience as much as one can and moving through it rather than resisting it or
dwelling…
Thea: 01:30 And even moving with it
while it moves through, I think, is something as opposed to resisting, but to be
able to see when there are these obstacles or challenges that come into our
lives that are pushing us into areas that are more uncomfortable or unknown,
how to sort of listen to the signals, listen to the current that’s moving with
you and use the current to continue your movement wherever it is your goals are
or…destinies as opposed to trying to turn around in the current, as opposed
to pushing past it. I don’t know. I’m losing the analogy.
Anne: 02:28 No, I agree. I mean…
Thea: 02:30 …Which allows for a bit more harmonious, enjoyable moving down…
Anne: 02:35 You also have the
opportunity in that then to find your true path. I mean, it rarely looks
exactly like you thought it was going to look like, right? And so to be open to
the possibility that you’re being redirected in ultimately a positive way, if
you can just kind of work with it, you know?
Thea: 03:05 Right. That what comes to
you is of a good nature and you are to find ways to work with it. To continue
your becoming.
Anne: 03:17 Yeah. Right. And even the
things that come to you of a bad nature, we can speculate that that will assist
our growing as well. Depending on how we respond to it, and identify and
recognize it.
Thea: 03:29 Well that’s what I’m
saying––how we respond to it I think is what makes it good or bad, more than it
may be. That’s what I’m just wondering. It’s like everything that comes up is
there to show you something. Now it may be that you veer a little bit away out
of that sector, you know, maybe it shows itself so you can go, “Oh, I need
to reroute a little bit like this.” But that everything that comes is of a
nature that is there for you to see and to utilize it, is basically what you’re
saying.
Anne: 04:03 Absolutely. I mean, I
don’t think we’re here by accident. Let’s put it that way. Or you can choose
to, you know, live that way. Good luck. You know, if you think that this is
just an accident, I don’t know, whatever works for people. But it certainly
resonates much more for me and makes much more sense to me that there is a
purpose to it because whatever I observe around me demonstrates that there’s a
perfect purpose to everything, you know, to the interaction of, you know, these
trees to the earth, to the earth to us, us to the trees and all. It’s a pretty
perfect design. So the idea that we’re some accidental blip in it sounds
ridiculous, but anyway.
Thea: 04:54 Sounds just preposterous.
Anne: 04:54 It’s like the most
make-believe fairy tale, right? That doesn’t make sense. That sounds like
fiction. Anyway, we’re getting off on a tangent.
Thea: 05:08 A little bit. So it
started with, how did we start this, finding grace in the movements and change
of life.
Anne: 05:16 How we respond to change,
basically, and what can help us, what can inform us?
Thea: 05:22 And we can take that to
an analogy of birth a bit. I mean it’s a little bit like, here comes the next
phase. It’s uncomfortable and difficult and scary, cause you don’t know. It’s,
I think, what did I say last conversation we had was it’s unbelievable, the
space that you’re being asked to go into. You don’t have a reference for it.
You don’t have anything you can liken to it. And then still the only way
through it is to unfold a little more.
Anne: 06:00 Well the only way through
it is forward. That’s the main thing.
Thea: 06:04 Forward. But the forward
comes with a pushing. There is a pushing, right? And there is a contracting,
but simultaneously there’s an opening, there’s a letting go in the contracting.
So you’re having both those forces at the same time, practically. Right? This
and this. The gloves, sorry.
Anne: 06:27 No the light’s moving.
It’s a pretty light, but it’s kind of like…can’t see us at all.
Thea: 06:31 Blinding?
Anne: 06:35 Oh, look what happens
there. When I do that and move it slightly. Let’s see.
Anne: 06:40 This is to continue on
from where we were because we started building on this.
Thea: 06:47 And we wanted to clarify
and explore a little bit more what we were discussing about when something
comes. That essentially the nature of reality, what comes to us, what thoughts,
what challenges, whatever it is, is good. And that doesn’t, it’s not, or maybe
it is the same as “It’s all good man,” because it is, but there is
distinction.
Anne: 07:18 So my point was like, I’m
loathe to get into, you know, relativity because I think that can go astray so
quickly, but like we were touching on in the discussion sometimes yesterday. I
sense, I’m eager to get beyond the duality, too. Like, there’s more to it,
there’s more dimension here. And so I think you talking about then accepting
that the ultimate nature of reality is good. Well, and is God right?
Thea: 07:52 And is God. And so that
that comes, is good. And it’s in how we meet that which comes, that determines
our experiences of good or bad, but the good is there as the foundation of it.
And so do, do we struggle with it? Do we rail against it? Do we look at what
it’s asking us to bring, to show, which then allows the good to come. I mean, I
don’t know, I felt like I was more clear about it a little bit ago, but
there’s, there’s like the layers of it as they come to us. It’s like the
underneath current, that which is existing all the time. That is good.
Anne: 08:45 And that’s what I feel
like it relates to the whole point of me saying, you know, I don’t believe
we’re accidental. You know, the idea of us being accidental, of there not being
an infinitely complex plan at work or design at work seems absurd––I think if
you’re walking through life fairly aware.
Thea: 09:07 I mean, and then if we
even think of just an ultimate-ish plan being the macro of the microcosms that
we’re living in every moment, I mean.
Anne: 09:18 It all contributes, it’s
all part of it. Existing on so many levels and layers within ourselves, within
our stages of development, of humanity’s development, within every and all.
It’s complex. But I suppose what it comes down to is, you know, I think
probably it’s looking at it one way or the other. It’s either that this is by
design and therefore purposeful. Every moment is an opportunity to act with
purpose.
Thea: 09:54 True. Yeah, I think
that’s huge. That’s liberating. That’s empowering. That’s everything really.
Because if all those things, I mean, and I’m even talking like the little
thoughts, you know––and we’ve shared this living and knowing each other for so
long––you know, if you’re leaving the house and there’s that little blip that
says check, check if the whatever, the window’s closed or the fire’s off or
grab your keys or grab a hat. Those times that we don’t listen to those little
things, we then look back and go, Oh, I did know. I’m taking that as the thread
of all of it because it’s there.
Anne: 10:44 It’s intelligence.
There’s an intelligence there.
Thea: 10:44 There’s an intelligence
and intelligibility. It’s there for us to pay attention to or to ignore, and
that sort of sets our route.
Anne: 10:53 And so getting back to
moving through challenges, meeting challenges, how we face our obstacles and
move through life. That is what sets the tone. That is what informs the way we
do it.
Thea: 11:12 Yeah. And is it
purposeful? Is it meaningful? That depends on what we choose, like how we’re
able to perceive it because it is, we’re either aware of it or we’re not.
Anne: 11:26 Right. And probably
learning and growing either way. Right? Hopefully. Sometimes we can get pretty
stuck.
Thea: 11:38 And God, I mean, It’s
like even those getting stuck, Oh, we were likening this to an analogy of birth
later on in our conversation. We didn’t get there yet, but even that, right? Is
there some something that getting stuck for a moment and then you find a new
route through it, but you have to sometimes surrender then to that being stuck.
I am stuck, and then something else can move or you can get back into the
movement or be picked up by the movement.
Anne: 12:12 Well because you know, a
theme that has come up in other discussions I’ve had recently is just that
everything is moving, and so it’s when we try to when we put on this pretense
of it being static, it makes the whole thing way harder, right? It’s always
moving. So we just have to––I mean this sounds, it always gets down to the
platitudinal, trite cliches.
Thea: 12:50 Well there’s truth in
those.
Anne: 12:50 Yes, they’re here for a
reason, but that’s the “going with the flow.” And you know, I don’t
mean it in that way.
Thea: 12:58 Well, here’s the thing
though, as you were saying, being static, being without movement, that’s what
creates the static and what earlier in some conversation we were having, I was
thinking that’s part of––oh, talking about the birth or the moving through
obstacles, the unfolding or the shucking off of that which is staticky. Like
those little pieces that aren’t in the flow. The more we let go of those with
less and less of our own resistance to them being let go, the freer we are in
that flow, the more strong the current is and the clearer it is, whatever it
is, however, moving.
Anne: 13:42 Totally. Well that’s also
you know, it’s casting away expectation of what one thought it was going to be,
look like, or whatever. That’s one thing, is being able to do that quickly. It
makes you get through things a lot more quickly and more easily I think with
less resistance. But also, it strikes me to then bring up the fact, the
importance of then what foundational principles are you holding onto? Because
we have to hold on to something, right? To get us through whatever it is. So
what is the foundational principle that allows you to just with grace, with
dignity, with courage, with faith, faith, faith. That’s the biggest part of it,
right? With faith. So are those? Those are the foundational principles, right?
Thea: 14:39 Like every religion has these tenets, ways of being that you hold onto. And so those are the framework. Those are the structure. That’s like the bones of it all for everything else to work around.
Anne: 14:57 Exactly. But you know,
the words can stop losing their meaning. Right. And that’s the problem with
organized religion.
Thea: 15:06 And that’s why there are
aspects that we’ve had conversations about. It’s like we’re in a time of
developing a new language. Language is constantly moving because things start
to mean different things when they lose their, their root to the meanings. So
sometimes we have to find ways to revitalize those meanings. And even maybe
it’s just bringing the depth and breadth of these things to go with the flow. I
mean all these phrases. They’re all in it.
Anne: 15:45 The Tao, yeah. I think we
should cut it.
Thea: 15:58 I think it’s done. I
think it’s done. Yeah. Well, there might be more thoughts that come up.
Anne: 16:03 There may be! All right.
See ya folks.
Both my kids were born at home. People have often remarked on the courage I must have had to have made that choice. It wasn’t courage––it was a desire for a comfortable, supportive birth environment I knew was the best bet for my kids and me to avoid unnecessary trauma and intervention. There are times when medical intervention is necessary, but most of the time, the medical system itself and its medicalized birth practices create the issues which lead to intervention in the first place.
Our bodies are designed to give birth. Fit, healthy women in most cases should be able to deliver their babies naturally––if only they are allowed to. I was 37 years old with my first pregnancy and 40 with my second. My husband and I eschewed all the tests and screenings recommended for “a woman my age,” as we were committed to bringing our children into the world, regardless of what abnormalities or issues such screenings might suggest. And we were blessed with two wonderfully healthy children born without complication or intervention.
I remember being questioned about our choice to birth at home when I was pregnant with our eldest. Well-intended friends pointed to historical maternal and infant mortality rates as an argument for hospital birth. A closer look at the history, however, largely implicates hospitals and doctors in the staggeringly high maternal mortality rates from puerperal fever in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries––in which it was common practice for the medical profession to examine pregnant women and deliver babies after performing autopsies, WITHOUT WASHING THEIR HANDS. As Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk emphasize in their landmark book “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History,” puerperal fever’s massive maternal death toll profoundly impacted the fabric of society. It is no wonder this tragic and largely avoidable episode in recent human history influences our fears surrounding childbirth.
Poverty, lack of sanitation, lack of nutrition and poor standard of living during that time period also contributed to overall mortality rates, life expectancy and birth outcomes. When determining the risks of childbirth in this day and age in the US and other developed nations, it’s critical to examine our history and whether those risk factors still apply. Further, it is paramount that we look at the actual statistics involving home birth here in the US. Among low-risk women, planned home births result in low rates of interventions without an increase in adverse outcomes for mothers and babies.
Furthermore, the medical system in the US is the cause of so many deaths that researchers from Johns Hopkins wrote an open letter to the CDC to request that CDC change its record collection criteria to accurately inform the public of this alarming statistic. With medical errors being the 3rd leading cause of death in our country, the hospital hardly seems a sensible environment for a healthy expectant mother to deliver her healthy baby into. On the contrary, the mother and baby would seem at less risk of fatal complications in the safety of their own home, attended to by trained midwives.
Beyond the health and safety of the mother and child, there are many more reasons to deliver at home. In the privacy of her own home, the mother is allowed to labor at her own pace. She can labor in the comfort and quiet of her own bedroom, bathtub or birth tub. While her midwives monitor her and the baby’s vitals throughout, they are unobtrusive and respectful, and they accommodate her timing, not theirs. She is not surrounded by or attached to any machines and monitors, and she is able to move her body freely.
Without intervention or epidural, labor proceeds naturally, as baby and mother coordinate their rhythm and contractions to bring the birth. The midwives do not pressure the mother to take Pitocin to induce labor. She is allowed to proceed as her body and her baby’s body dictates.
Family members or chosen friends are the only other people in the home, quietly and respectfully on-hand to support the laboring mother and whatever she may need at the time. A hushed reverence pervades the scene. And when the baby arrives, he or she is welcomed into the quiet, warm room, surrounded only by loving family, friends and trusted midwives the mother has gotten to know well over the course of her pregnancy.
Newborn baby and mother remain together in the comfort of their bed, while over the next couple of hours the midwives gently monitor, record birth stats and care for the mother (one of my midwives even brought me a plate of scrambled eggs after the birth of our daughter, as she felt I needed the protein). Once they determine all is well, they pack up their oxygen and equipment, hug the new mother, kiss the new baby and go home, only to return the next day and beyond to continue post-partum monitoring and care.
Mother and baby, big brother and father fall asleep in the comfort of their own beds. What a lovely way to welcome this new member of the family. And what a lovely way to come into the world.
What better entry into the world than the loving sanctuary of one’s family home? The medicalization of birth in the US may account for its alarmingly high infant and maternal mortality rates––so let’s take a closer look when evaluating which environment poses the bigger risk.
Home Birth “veterans” and sisters Anne Mason and Thea Mason examine and discuss.
**NOTE TO VIEWER/LISTENER: Anne read from a few online articles she had printed out right before their chat, but the print outs didn’t display a few things properly, and she guessed at source and date of a couple. The piece she thought was from Harvard Medical Review was actually from Harvard Business Review (link below), and the NPR piece on the Johns Hopkins study was from May 2016 (link below as well.)
We’ve included a few additional links as well, in order to help anyone get started in doing their own research about the risks and benefits of natural home birth vs medicalized hospital births. The transcript to the video can be found below the links:
Anne: 00:05 So we decided we want to
talk about home birth this episode, and it follows on a friend is coming up to
having her third child and has decided to do a home birth. And we were talking
about it, and given that you had all of your boys at home, your healthy boys at
home, and I had both my kids at home, and our mother had our youngest at home,
we have some experience with that and thought it related to a lot of the other
discussions we’ve had about empowerment, authority, autonomy, self
responsibility and more. (That’s A loud, long train horn!)
Thea: 01:09 You know, it all depends
on the personality, I think, of the train driver. They vary. Sometimes it’s
like “HONNNNNK!”
Anne: 01:19 And what kind of day
they’re having! So, just to start out with a couple of thoughts, and we’ll go
from there. A lot of times I’ll be in a group of women or be talking to women
about birth, and having had a home birth, and those that haven’t had that
experience will often say, “Oh, how brave. You’re so brave.” (Wow.
That guy is really agro!) So yeah, they’ll say, “Oh, you’re so
brave.” And I always say, “No trust me, I think you’re the brave
one.” The women who manage to have uncomplicated births without
intervention, according to the plan that they had set forth when they came into
the hospital––I can’t really even imagine having that experience. How much
harder you would be to have had you know, as gentle a birth as birth can be.
Thea: 02:30 Right? Yeah. I mean, as
birth is this place of absolutely power and vulnerability at the same time, and
to be in a situation that you aren’t even really comfortable or quite relaxed.
I can’t even fathom.
Anne: 02:52 I mean, any woman who’s
gone through this knows––you’re in a different state of mind.
Thea: 03:01 If you’re allowed to be.
And I wonder about that too. I mean, I think, I don’t know, I haven’t done it
in the hospital. And I wonder if women who have given birth in hospitals have
had varying experiences of being in that altered state. Or not.
Anne: 03:18 Or if they have to always
kind of be on in order to say no or to watch what’s going on––I mean, just
alone, so, you know obviously complications can happen in any situation, right?
But first off most midwives are incredibly experienced at delivering babies,
actually delivering them, not C-sections, but actually delivering them. And
delivering them in a number of different circumstances. I mean, my son for
example, the cord was wrapped around his head as happens In think in like a
quarter of births. Right? My midwife who delivered our daughter, helped me
deliver our daughter, she worked in the back countries of Amish land, right?
She delivered twins, she delivered breech babies. She could do anything, you
know? And it was wonderful to be in the hands of someone so beautifully
experienced, no matter what came up. And of course, midwives, they bring the
oxygen, they have a lot of things at their disposal right here at the house.
And they have relationships with doctors at hospitals so that if you need to
transfer, you can go there. But. Provided it goes just the normal course,
you’re in your own home, you’re in your own bed or bathtub or whatever you choose.
You are able to go at your own pace. You don’t have to speed it up or, or
either say no constantly to Pitocin or finally accept taking Pitocin to
stimulate your contractions in order to get things moving because the hospital
won’t allow you to be there for longer than a couple of days, et cetera. Right?
So many things. And on top of it, you don’t have to worry about people coming
and checking, taking blood, all the things, who knows. I mean, I have no idea
what it’s like ’cause I’ve not done it except for having watched documentaries
on the difference between those types of births. But you know, you don’t need
to be hooked up to machines. You don’t have the constant intrusion of people
coming in and out. And more. So it just facilitates the birth experience
happening healthily and smoothly.
Thea: 05:53 It does. As so many
pieces of literature about the space of birth liken it to love making in a way,
too. Because anything that requires a space of settling in, relaxing, letting
down, opening up––t’s a very intimate experience. And picturing love making in
the hospital, they don’t go so well together, you know. So I think that’s one
picture. And another thing that was sparking in my mind while you were laying
out those examples is––being a midwife, which is “with woman”, is
“with them, is much like being a parent, knowing when to intervene and
when to stay back and allow the process to simply occur. And you’re frankly
allowing that space to be there. We’re doing that as parents for our children.
Sometimes failing, sometimes being right on point. We’re doing that as
teachers. Anything that is a guiding post requires that ability to know when to
intervene and when to sit back to let the wisdom of the process have its place.
And that’s what gets lost in the hospital, right? Because since we have all
these things to check, we do. So that’s one part.
Anne: 07:31 Agreed. I remember even
as a child being able to hold my youngest sister in my arms before she was
even, you know, washed off and like insisting on that. I remember insisting
that I wanted to. And mom was on the bean bag in our family room. It was an
extraordinarily different experience than she had had with her previous three
births with me and our other sister, she had had them in one hospital and had
just pretty bad experiences being forced to inducebeing kept away from her
child at length and more. I remember then with you, she tried a different
hospital hoping that would be better. Not at all. And finally went to the next
obvious choice, which was not even legal in the state at the time.
Thea: 08:39 I don’t know if it is
yet. It wasn’t even 20 years ago.
Anne: 08:42 Right, where we grew up.
Right. So I guess what I’d like to do, I think you had articulated this, maybe
you want to say it again about just inverting…
Thea: 08:55 Well I’ve had those
conversations with people too who’ve said how courageous to do it at home and
my feeling quite the same as you. That, “No.” And then I was thinking
that it’s really about taking that image, that picture of what birth is and
it’s become inverted. It’s slipped through the wormhole to the other side, you
know, the images of what’s courageous, and what’s comforting and safe, you
know? And I think that there’s a lot of movement of that, at least in the
communities that we live in, of people recognizing that birth needs to be re
looked at to be redone, to be safe. And to be non medicalized to give families
the best start. You know, I think one of the big parts of it being so
medicalized is that it seems to create distance when there should be connection
right off the bat, you know? And it’s hard enough. I mean, that’s the part that
boggles my mind. It’s hard enough, just the actual physical laboring of it. And
then really the weeks after of the care, I mean, it’s amazing what we do.
Anne: 10:24 Well, it’s, I mean, let’s
go further. It’s not just, yes, the actual physical laboring, but I’ve never
experienced anything like it. Right? And having done it we all, most women I
think would agree you get to a point and I guess that that’s around transition,
but you get to a point where you cannot imagine going further. It is
unbearable. Right? And it’s hard to describe. It’s not a pain like, like a
wound. It’s the most unpleasant discomfort I’ve ever had. That goes beyond
pain, but it’s not sharp pain.
Thea: 11:21 I would even call it more,
I mean, I know we all have our different colorings of it and I think that
that’s such an interesting idea we’ve talked about even in another
conversation––about what we identify as pain and how we articulate it and how
we hold it in our understanding. But it’s more like “unbelievable.”
It’s going to a space that is unbelievable. And there is required a complete
surrender into what is unbelievable.
Anne: 11:54 Yes, yes. And a courage,
I mean, and I, I remember…
Thea: 12:02 Your first birth? I
remember it, too.
Anne: 12:04 Well, the first birth you
remember because, and I’ll say to the viewer, this is after Thea’s third birth,
third home birth, and she has her youngest in a sling having been born seven
weeks before. And she’s there in my little apartment, you know, helping me
along. And me in my heady way and crazy trippy way that birth sends you into
not realizing that I was as close as I was, just somehow thinking that it was
just getting, I was just getting more, more pathetically weak and unable to, to
deal with it. And I remember you just marveling that I was still talking about
it instead of just going into myself. Right? And then the second time Thea got
there 15 minutes after the delivery of my daughter. And I remember at the point
where my midwife was saying she’s, because of course the midwives arethey’re
checking all the time. They’re monitoring the heart rate of the baby, yours,
everything. Right? And intimately, and frequently. They’re right there. And she
said, “Okay, you know, if they don’t come out,”––we weren’t sure, boy
or girl––”they don’t come out in the next one or doesn’t start coming out,
we’re going to have you change your position.” And in that moment, and she
told me why, because her heart rate was, not coming up as quickly as it should.
And I remember thinking, “Okay,” and all I could think of was that
scene from Braveheart where Mel Gibson’s character’s be being disemboweled and
he shouts “Freedom!” And I think to myself, because it’s based on a true
story, I thought to myself, “If somebody could do that and shout
‘Freedom!”, I can do this and I can get her out.” And I did. Right?
So it’s like we all go through all these different processes. (Laughter).
Thea: 14:25 (Laughter) Wow!
Anne: 14:25 But doing that, or as we
were talking about earlier knowing very deep down that something has to
be.You’re in touch with what’s going on there with your child. And I’ve heard
so many stories from so many women who have said, whether it’s the doctor or
the midwife or anybody saying no, you know, you’re not far, or you’ve still got
a while…And the woman is just like, “No, I know they need to come out,
and not only do they need to come out, I need to transfer because they need to
come out now.” And the mother gets in touch with an instinct in her that
she’s never had before. That that puts her authority over her child above all
else. And in home birth in, in my experience and mind, really allows that to
happen in a much more conducive way, I guess. Pardon me. Than the hospital,
medicalized births.
Thea: 15:42 Yeah. A total different
framework. Can we pause for one quick second?
Anne: 15:50 Yeah. As I get a drink of
water so I don’t hack all over the place. Hold on. Yeah. Okay. So we just got
off on a tangent, but I want to point out a couple of things to folks who are
looking at this and are interested in the idea of home birth but are concerned
about the risks. So this came out this last year or so (NOTE: IT WAS ACTUALLY
MAY 2016) ––a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins medicine says medical
errors should rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States.
And that’s I have a feeling that’s probably even higher, you know, because
that’s really what’s, what’s attributed to medical errors. And our experience
you know, extensive experience in the hospitals taking care of our parents
suggests to me that there are a lot of things, a lot of dots that are not
connected where intervention causes more complications that lead to death as
well.
Thea: 16:52 And unnecessary
interventions and even mis and ill communicated Interventions. So much of it I
think is like the whole system is so big that the communication channels are
not connected and cohesive and things get missed, or whatever.
Anne: 17:13 Absolutely. It’s become
quite dehumanized, you know, and you don’t want to really bring a child into
such an dehumanised system to give them a good start, you know? And it’s not to
say that there aren’t some hospitals with some really great teams and great
departments that really––and I know there’s a movement to revamp that too, and
to give women more options of even like water births in hospitals and try to
create an environment that’s a little closer to a birth center. So I know that
consciousness is there, but you could also just do it at home, you know? So
then here’s another I think this was like Harvard Medical Review. (NOTE: IT WAS
ACTUALLY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW.) I don’t have it printed out where it is, but
“Rising US maternal mortality rate demands action from employers,”
and it goes in to say “The US maternal mortality rate has more than
doubled from 10.3 per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 23.8 in 2014. Over 700
women a year die of complications related to pregnancy each year in the United
States. And two thirds of those deaths are preventable. 50,000 women suffer
from life threatening complications of pregnancy. A report from the
Commonwealth Fund released in December found American women have the greatest
risk of dying from pregnancy complications among 11 high income
countries.” Wow. And then another one I think this was CBS News. Yeah, and
I think this is, let’s see. This was a 2013 story, but “US has highest
first day infant mortality out of industrialized world, group reports. About
11,300 newborns die within 24 hours of their birth in the U S each year, 50%
more first day deaths than all other industrialized countries combined. I
mean…
Anne: 19:33 So, the other thing I
want to bring up, and I don’t have all the data in front of me, but if you
really, if you look into the history of midwifery and then the involvement
ofthe movement toward surgeons getting involved in birth. I mean, because since
time immemorial, really women have been…
Thea: 20:10 The carriers of birth.
The holders.
Anne: 20:13 Yeah. The midwives have
always been women. Until really the last couple hundred years. I imagine, I
mean, it seemed like an easy gig. Right? And, you know, and they’re also,
there’s good intention behind it too, because there were complications and
there were complications for lots of reasons that don’t actually apply anymore.
Thea: 20:38 Sanitation, cleanliness,
poverty.
Anne: 20:39 Absolutely. Not to mention––okay.
Well then, then let’s get into this. So it’s like a little known tidbit that
should be discussed a lot more in our history books when we’re looking at
childbirth infant mortality infectious disease and more. But there was an
epidemic of puerperal fever1700’s and on through the 1800s and the advent and
during the real explosion of the industrialized revolution where surgeons were
not washing their hands. And there was this, you know, it was like a
progressive idea that washing hands is helpful in the medical field. There
seemed to be a resistance to washing one’s hands. And so you would have the
doctors, the surgeons leaving the corpse and death and going straight over to
deliver babies. And that resulted in this huge epidemic of maternal mortality.
It was this epidemic of puerperal fever. And that really didn’t start changing
on an institutionalized level until the forties, the 1940s, where that became
implemented as a rule that you have to wash your hands before helping deliver a
baby. So it’s the implications of that are staggering. And it’s its own
conversation or book really where you have to consider how that impacted the
society, the societal fabric. You had hundreds of thousands of women dying in
childbirth. So you had this staggering number of orphans resulting from that
right around the time of the industrial revolution, which led to, you know,
families without mothers child labor…
Thea: 23:07 The misery of a time. The
children. Yeah. That’s amazing.
Anne: 23:11 Oh my God. When the women
aren’t around to manage things on a whole, widespread level. So you had that
and, and what was the other thing we were talking about? We’re just talking
about like even just the birth practices of you know, the earlier part of last
century, I mean, Twilight, chloroform, forceps, all those interventions…
Thea: 23:42 Vacuum.
Anne: 23:42 They look at that now and
they realize how many deaths and complications that caused. Right? So I think
that if anyone is remotely interested in the empowering and healthy experience
of delivering your child at home, I would recommend, you know, a cursory
examination of the real history of that. And why we have gotten so afraid of
childbirth’s dangers and what those dangers really are now and how those
factors can be controlled or what of those factors even apply anymore.
Thea: 24:31 Right. And, and what it
would mean, really in a vast way, if as large portions of our communities
started to really bring it back to the home space, what would that do to our
communities in a broad and far seeing line? What ways would that change our
initial bonding with our children and therefore our relationship and dynamics
of parenting? I mean the relationship aspect goes on and on and on and
trickles. If we can minimize those pivotal, intrinsic to who we become and what
we work with traumas, as we come into the world. Because we all have our
traumas to work through. And if in this basic, deep realm of entering the
earth, if there’s love and warmth and safety filling us and feeding us as the
parent and as the baby coming in, what would that do to our world? As opposed
to the fear and tension and separation we experience.
Anne: 25:45 Absolutely. And traumas.
I mean, just the interventions that are practiced as routine in the US birth
practicesis traumatic. On first day of life, second day of life, you know. Just
iimagine what it could be like for a human being to enter this realm and be
laying there in one’s mother’s arms, in the warm and dimly lit room, quiet,
surrounded only by loving family and friends.
Thea: 26:42 Reverent.
Anne: 26:42 Loving midwives. Because
by the way, for anyone also wondering, the midwife always brings an assist,
another midwife, they assist each other. There’s always two of them. What a
difference would that make to our world if that’s how we all came into the
world, right? So, so think about that. You know, we’re, we’re up on time. Maybe
we’ll talk more about this.
Thea: 27:10 Yeah, there are so many
angles and, and colorings of this dialogue that really play out into all of the
things we think about. Really.
Anne: 27:20 It reverberates, right?
So, hey, so if you want to give your child the right start? Let’s start at
birth. Let’s start at birth.
Thea: 27:33 Yeah, let’s start at
birth. Thanks. Great. Talk to you later.
Anne: 27:38 See you later. Okay. Let
me end this again.
