Freedom

New Mother's Moon

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The new moon this month is the Mother's Moon, the moon full of the unconditional, formless, limitless love of the mother goddess. This year's new Mothers Moon happens to fall right around the Fourth of July, a holiday that last year I called the epitome of the Father's Moon energies. I still think that American Independence Day is, at its core, more aligned with the Father's Moon than the Mother's Moon but it is interesting to think about how it embodies the moon it falls in this year.

Freedom is an elusive concept. The dictionary defines it as being exempt from confinement, external control or regulation or the power to determine action without constraint. Many people don't really understand what freedom means because we middle class, 21st century Americans enjoy a level of economic, political, religious and personal freedom that is virtually unprecedented in human history. I just finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy, a young adult science fiction set in a world where people have very little freedom of choice or even thought. The books are so well written that I really had an emotional experience living into that constrictive, harsh world. I actually had moments, walking in the woods or driving down the road, wondering if I was in my world or Katniss' world and fearing that the gamemakers or people from The Capitol were controlling my experience or watching me. Realizing that I was not, in fact, in that world allowed me to literally breathe free. My experience is nothing compared to those of people who have been incarcerated, held captive or otherwise stripped of their freedom but it was enough to make me think about how blessed I really am.

Freedom's conjoined twin is responsibility. Some kinds of freedom - school boys in June, a factory worker at the end of day whistle, a dog in the woods - are the result of a lack of responsibility. Other freedoms, like those of citizens in a democracy, members of a Quaker meeting or adults who pay their own rent, come with a very hefty dose of responsibility. I find it interesting to think that the freedoms from responsibility can only be fleeting. Eventually those school boys need to eat and someone needs to have worked to get the food on the table. Freedoms with responsibility, though, can be very long lasting because the person enjoying the freedom is the person doing the work to maintain it.

I spent some time this week with my friend and her 4 month old twin sons. The babies enjoy existence in a blissful state of freedom from responsibility. Sure, they are working hard to grow and make sense of this crazy world they just got born into, but they don't have to do any work to provide for their own needs. Their mama does all of that. And though my friend loves her new life, she is also acutely feeling the lack of her previous freedoms. Hopefully, the work she is doing now and the freedoms she has given up in this season of her life will lay a foundation of love and trust in her sons so they can move out into the world in a healthy way as they grow. With care and luck, they will have the emotional home base to return to so they can explore the freedoms that come with responsibilities in the coming decades.

Sometimes I wonder about the mothers of America's Founding Fathers. They must have been amazing women. Not only did they raise sons to adulthood in a time when that was a feat accomplished against all odds, and not only did they do it with none of the modern conveniences we think are necessary, they did it so well as to raise men who were willing to make giant leaps into the unknown. Men who were so confident that they were loved that they were willing to take the enormous risk of breaking with all the cultural, political and philosophical traditions they knew. And even if the Founding Fathers' actual mothers didn't succeed in providing that foundation for their sons, someone did. Motherlove, the unconditional love that values you just for being you, is something we have turned to god for all over the world and in many traditions.

This is a big topic, and I can't quite find a way to wrap it all up with a bow. I'd rather end with some more quotes and questions....

Janis Joplin says freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose....

Stan Lee says with great power comes great responsibility....

The second Sabian Symbol I drew for this year, Building a Better Teacher 2011, was A Deserter from the Navy Stands Suddenly Aware of a Dawning Truth: Freedom is Never the Result of Compromise.

What does it all mean? How does one secure freedoms and enjoy responsibilities? How do we nurture the secure foundations of freedom in ourselves and others? What compromises do I need to be careful about? When do you feel most free, most secure, most loved? What does Fourth of July mean to you?


The photos all came up when I searched "freedom" on Flickr. Thanks izarbeltza, _ambrown, The U.S. Army and Nicolo Paternosters. Click on the photos or their names to see more of their work.


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Mother's Moon 2009: Gifts From the Mother

New Mother's Moon 2010: You Are the Mother's Beloved Child

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July is a Father's Moon holiday if there ever was one. I've recently found myself describing the energies of this time of year as the hot, dry, aggressive, shooting, yang energies of All That is Manly and Good in the World. If that doesn't describe this quintessential American holiday then I just don't know what does.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: The Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the transcontinental railroad and the Eisenhower interstate system, jumbo jets and the Gemini Moon missions. We are a people who rise to a challenge and are proud of our successes.

These masculine energies (I almost prefer "yang" to "masculine" because it allows the concept to be separate from maleness. Humans of any sex or gender encompass both yin and yang energies in their beings) have gotten a bad rap in the recent years, but they are essential to meeting our true potential as an individual or a society. These are the energies that instigate building, planting, and harvesting. These energies incite young adults to strike out on their own and communities to revolt against unjust rulers. They are the impetus for contests and challenges of all kinds as well as the acts of culling and decision making. In fact, most of the things we Americans have to be most proud of are born out of masculine, yang, Father Moon energies.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and all the black, white, young and old people who used non violent resistence to break the back of opressive segregation in our country.

The American Fourth of July holiday celebrates all these energies as we Americans express them so essentially. Our country was born out of a belief that we can live life on our own terms as individuals and as communities. Our Founding Fathers were wise men who worked hard to craft governing documents by culling and winnowing words and ideas until only the most important were left in. Despite the repercussions that we can see so clearly from this side of history, the expansion of our territory across the continent was driven by people who were willing to take chances to be free from oppression and the constriction of "society." The great American fortunes were built by men who took chances and built companies, factories and industries to harness the great natural resources of our land. As the pioneers saw it grass is just grass, but a cattle ranch or a farm is money in the bank and a chance to live in freedom.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: The native people of this land who, despite centuries of explicit attempts to annhilate them, are still here, still living and still succeeding in adding their voice to our American story.

Last summer I wrote that the Father Moon energies might just be the root of all the evil our culture has wrecked upon this earth. Expanding, conquering and controlling energies are behind environmental degradation, oppression of minority groups and massive scale war that have marked this era in our history. Our American history is so full of tales of Father Moon energies that they are, of course, equally full of the tragic consequences of these energies unchecked. The anti-war, minority rights and environmental awareness movements of the last 30 years have all been directly and explicitly working against these tendencies in our culture.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B Anthony, the people of Wyoming, and all the women and men who worked tirelessly and peacefully to assert the right of women to vote in this country's elections.

We should be sure though, in our work at bringing balance to our lives and to the world that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need the penetrating and constricting action of the Father’s Moon energy to form the formless potential of the Mother’s Moon energy into something useful. You can argue the environmental impact of dams and irrigation projects but those projects have allowed vast areas of this country to support much larger populations than the virgin land could support. The same is true of the industrialization of the Northeastern United States and the diking of rivers in the Midwest. A field, even a beautiful one full of grasses and flowers can not support the same amount of people or cattle as one plowed and planted with grain. These are the Father’s Moon energies at work.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: Irving Berlin, I.M. Pei, Carlos Santana, Bob Hope, John Audubon and all of the other immigrants who have crossed oceans or deserts to come to this country and lend their talents to our ever changing society.

So let us celebrate these fiery and explosive, constricting and controlling, penetrating and culling forces of All That Is Manly and Good In the World. Let’s do it now, at the height of the sun’s power in the heat of the summer. Let’s celebrate our ability to create fireworks and sky scrapers, to plow fields and teach children. Let’s make some noise and be a little dangerous. Sometimes it is just necessary.

• Reasons I'm proud to be an American: levels of wealth, health and freedom of conscience unprecedented in history which allow us to pursue even greater levels of just wealth, universal health and freedoms of all kinds for all people. Happy 4th of July!

Photos by one of my best good Flickr friends graygoosie. Thanks to her for letting me use them. Go see what she's up to this summer by clicking on the photos!