Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés's blog

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 29 - November 14, 2008

"Water can wear through stone,"
good advice my grandmother said ...
but not if that prayer puts us to sleep
causing "sinful patience" or an aeternal "put-up-with,"
rather than rousing us to new ideas and actions.
Consider then, an additional path of heart ...
When the wound to a people or the soul is ancient
or ongoing, and hierarchies chronically
disturb the healings,
then, what say you my sister subversive soul,
what say you my brother co-conspirator,
let us rise up to heal the wounds,
bypassing the hierarchy completely ...

More ripping sutures off wounds between Jews and Christians? More enmity fanned between Jews and Catholics?

Again?

This week, The London Times online (www.timesonline.co.uk) reports that Riccardo Di Segni, Chief Rabbi of Rome, has accused Pope Benedict XVI and Benedict’s close-in major-domos -- who also vociferously support beatification of Pope Pius XII -- of having "turned a blind eye" to the Nazi Holocaust ... this has aroused "indignation." Rabbi accuses Benedict of reversing Pope John Paul’s apologies to the Jews.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 28 - November 6, 2008

“New seed is faithful. It roots deepest in the places that are most empty.”
                   --cpe

The night after the election of Barack Obama, Collin Powell was interviewed by CNN. He did not say about Barack: “Look what he did!” Instead Powell said about the people: “Look what we did!”

Ironically, what has been brought to the fore in this election cycle, appears not to have occurred because we were plush-full with certainty, but rather from us being chronically emptied out …

Imagine, emptiness being one of the few conditions that attracts fresh assertion of worthy ideals.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 27 - October 31, 2008

This is the prayer I prayed before I filled out the secret paper ballot whilst sitting in my pickup truck in a rain storm this week: Please help me vote for the souls who can do the most to help those who suffer most ...

There is sometimes a cynical thought going round like a flu, that one’s vote doesn’t count; a single vote is only one tiny dot on a vast polka-dot field. Sure, tell that to Klee and Pollock, that one dot on the larger whole is unimportant.

To the artist, as to the scientist, as to the healer ... they witness that a glory of colored music, a vapor turning to good use, a healing that holds ... .can rise and fall on the often slightest addition of one element just so ... ‘the one small thing’ has the power to tear down, raise, move, pull together ... mountains; psychic ones, cultural ones, and otherwise.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 26 - October 24, 2008

Loss of "The Bounty"

You're wearing your scars inside-out, man,
Hardened Scars on the outside
Softest heart buried far down in the bilges....
That's backward, man; such a captain
disheartens, insults, barks orders far too harsh,
claims he's being lenient
when he orders sailors to be whipped in public,
instead of merely ordering they be hung til dead
Without gratitude for the entire crew of souls
Without respect for these waters....
Roiling and soiling all clear passages,
such captains rage
when time and again they are met with Mutiny ...
even as all the while they have told themselves
they were truly serving Majesty...

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Dear Brave Souls:

My columns at NCR will resume this coming week.

Thank you for holding faith while I helped care for a loved one who was devastatingly ill. She-- and her father-- have just passed. What tender-horrible harmony to these sudden leave-takings: not good or bad, rather-- hard or easy. Hard for us, even though the harmony of it all carries the greater Magnitude ...

You remain in my thrice-daily Angelus, always.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 25 -- Sept. 9, 2008

Levántate, da voces en la noche, al comenzar las vigilias;
Derrama como agua tu corazón ante la presencia del Señor;
Alza tus manos a él implorando la vida de tus pequeñitos,
Que desfallecen de hambre en las entradas de todas las calles.

Don’t just stand there, Rise Up!! Cry out! Cry out in the dark! Cry out at your vigil... Let your heart pour out like water ...let everyone and God see you are bold! Lift your hands! Lift! Your! Hands!... else your little children shall starve on every road.

Lamentations, 2:19

We come now to the final stave of the ancient tale, “The Handless Maiden," a story about a gifted woman severed and pushed into a tumultuous spiritual descent, forced to depend upon soul alone, and eventually finding her way to unleash every good gift within her, but now with confidence, now with greatest, unapologetic heart.. …

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 24 -- Sept. 2, 2008

There is a place in soul and psyche, La selva subterránea, The underground forest... a mysterious locus which acts as El refugio, a protected place where the exhausted spirit can safely rest... and where attracted by La luz violeta the violet light from worldly wounds, angels come to tend to souls with infinite tenderness.

        --cpe

Things are torn apart; Things need to be given rest ... Perhaps you grew up in the forests, lake lands and farmlands like I did. There, lightning and hail storms were called “cutting storms,” and “reaper storms,” as in Grim Reaper, for the lightning, the whipping rain and wind cut down living beings all around: livestock, sometimes a woman trying to bring the sheets from the line, a man trying to turn the red tractor towards home.

El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Vol. 1, No. 23 -- Aug. 18, 2008

In the old healing practices of many Latinos, we say that wounds are not pointless lacerations. We say that a sacred light emanates from the worst of the wounds... that nations can have wounds; environs can be wounded, that creatures and humans and gifts and ideas can be wounded.

Since the time I first told my grandmother that e.e. cummings had written: "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten-thousand stars how not to dance..." my grandmother ever after called him Saint E-E, and said he was just the kind of leader of the soul the world was longing for.