The Three Taboos

Throughout much of the modern world, we have historically had three great taboos: sex, death and finances.  In recent decades these have been coming up for healing.  It is always best if we deny nothing.  We can push things away for a time, but in the end they will be made known.  Such is the case with taboos. 

When I was a girl, back in the 1960’s we collectively faced our sexual taboo.  It was so amazing for me to watch as 'The Summer of Love' raised itself up, with it's pinnacle at The Haight, in San Francisco, in my home state of California.  As this change swept over our nation, women’s liberation and gay rights were soon free to be born.  The environmental movement and AIM followed suit as the feminine principle began to rise.

Then in the 1990’s the taboo of death began to be addressed.  My father was wholly unable to face the reality of his inevitable death and he, like many others of his generation, could neither speak nor think of his death.  Death was the enemy to be avoided at all costs and the standard western medical model of healing was the savior.  

Then, the need to release that outmoded ideology began to surface.  Culturally, we could no longer deny the reality of death.  Exercises addressing the prospect of death and dying began to enter our collective minds.  These have grown in acceptance and in popularity as the years have progressed.  Now, with the Hospice Movement, death has re-entered the home and our loved ones and their time to go is embraced with dignity and allowance. 

But, our third great taboo, financial transparency has still not yet been culturally addressed.  We have great disparity of wealth, not only among our friends and family members, in our neighborhoods and nation-wide, but also, and grossly so, around the world.  This has resulted in untold amounts of personal suffering along with a separation from the love and oneness that we know we all share.  And that is the key here, we only need to learn how to share.

Even among my closest friends, I have little idea about their financial situations.  People can get fired from their jobs in this country if they even so much as discuss their income figures with their co-workers.  This is still the great and firmly entrenched taboo of the western world.
 
So, the other morning, I found myself up early, before the day was fully awake, sitting in the softest light of the soon-to-be rising sun.  I had been asking myself over the last few weeks what this new situation at the pinnacle of our nation’s government was about.  Knowing that Divine Creator has a hand in everything, I was hoping for an insight, and then one came.  Without a thing on my mind, in that still sleepy morning light, it dropped in to my awareness, and I heard the words, “Financial Transparency.”  Instantaneously I knew that this was the answer to my question.  The time has come upon us now for this last, final great taboo to rise up for its healing.

May we all be blessed in this Holiday Season with equality and love.

© Josephine Laing 2016
 

Letting Go of the Ground We Stand On

Allyson said that mom introduced her to Janie tonight.  Mom has been in Hospice since May and has, as they used to say on the farm, "taken to her bed," since July.  There is no one that we can see in her room, but she is talking and visiting away in there, all night long, most nights.

There have been days, many of them, where it seems that she is passing right on throught those pearly gates.  But then the next day, just like the "Energizer Bunny," she pops back up with a healthy appetite and has two eggs with a couple of pieces of bacon, some toast and a quarter of a cantelope.  Later that evening, it's breaded shrimp with coctail sauce. 

She always was a good cook and has a fine appreciation for American cuisine, including ice cream, which is how she gets her meds down to ease her pain and make life a little easier for her Hospice caregivers, the ones who do their share of the heavy lifting.  Such a blessing.  One among many. with Allyson leading the stellum, lighting the way for us all.

It's not easy to die sometimes.  Just like there are difficult births, that stand out in contrast to the easy ones, there are also difficult deaths.  How does one let go of this dear old friend, the body?  I don't know.  I wish I did.  Because, if so, I might be able to help mom to say bye for now.  But I do feel that there is an elegance, and certainly an astrological significance, to the timing of our deaths, just like there is a significance to the timing of our births.  So, I give it all over to Divine Arrangement, knowing that there it rests in the best possible hands.

In the meanwhile, we the living do what must be done.  We select caskets, arrange for headstones, yesterday we bought the mortuary plot, today we crafted the obituary for the home town paper.   We also ate watermelon.  A little sweet with the sad.

I'll leave you with this poem, by Ranier Maria Rilke.  It is one of my favorites and pretty much sums it up for me.  I hope that it speaks to you as dearly as it speaks to me.

The Swan

This clumsy living that moves,
lumbering, as if in ropes,
through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die,
which is a letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to everyday,
is like the swan
when he nervously lets himself down into the water
which receives him gayly,
and which flows under and after him
wave after wave.
While the swan,
unmoving and marvelously calm
is pleased to be carried,
each moment more fully grown,
more like a king,
farther and farther on.

© Josephine Laing, 2015