Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Column

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.

Oh do not be too exuberant, for as you know, we’ll have to tie down those leaping bones, cramming them into a much smaller carapace. As in foot binding, we’ll let the true spirit ache under man-made strictures, and force the children to forget or else pretend that they cannot see what they truly see, hear what they truly hear, know what they truly know.

Thus the world will be made safe from inventive souls for another generation or two. And all the ill-made plans of the stick people would be satisfying to them, save for one thing...

Old women.
Old women who say,
“I’m here...
to interfere.”

There is no dearth of mystics in our time. There are only fewer eyes filled with the love of beholding them, less talk, less teaching about mystery and mystical matters and outcomes, more blinders so that fewer can easily recognize, straight from the soul, the roar of the wind we call the sensory presence of the Holy Ghost ... the Creative Fire.

When we were little, we’d walk to church
with our Grandmother.
As the church’s clapboard walls came into sight,
we had a ritual. We’d say, “There’s our church.”
But our grandmother would say, “No, that’s not our church.”
“Yes it is, Grandmother,” we’d say. “That’s our church.”
“No,” she’d say. “Our church is underneath that church.
That’s the real church we belong to.”

Old men carrying wicker baskets lined with purple velvet came rushing toward me as I entered the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Donations for completing the cathedral. I had three dollars, three subway tokens and a button. The old basket-holder returned the button. "Your change Ma'am," he smiled.

What do women truly want? To be truly seen. To stand in the blessings of those who love the God of Love, and not the Sadducean God of Crabbed Views.

Let us pray ....

My grandmother, Katerin, used to talk back to the priest on TV. She had an entire litany: Don’t tell me to be like Blessed Mother if you don’t really mean it all the way down to your bones, Father. Blessed Mother didn’t let anyone tell her what to do, except God. So, unless you’re God, don’t be trying to tell us what to do all the time. I just got a big phone call from heaven: God says there’s a big difference between really being God, and just thinking you are.”

The Blessed Mother is sometimes called in Spanish, La Sueñodora, the holy one who shows us we are pregnant with brave new dreams, and she expects us to follow through ... all the way .... as she did ... no matter how many human beings object.

Some can recognize the co-superiority of women with men. Some cannot. Those who cannot, create a world by rote.

Make art about whatever of God
you have been given to apprehend.
Make enormous and miniscule art,
the kinds we may have to look at
through a microscope at first,
in order to truly see... God.
And make the kind of art which,
even from miles away,
is of such magnitude,
we cannot take it all in.
Call all of these anlagen, God.
...From the first spark
of two atomic dots,
to the fully formed body
that will carry the wild flame
...let no one tell you
God is unsuitable
to be portrayed
by your art thusly.
Let no one convince you your art
is not worthy enough, timely enough,
pragmatic enough, prepared enough
to portray this Godly form.
Some of us arrived on earth by being beckoned.
But, most of us snuck across the border at night,
taking our chances, proving again that God,
the Spark of Life, can and will pass through any wall.