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The official blog for once upon a time there was a little girl by Marcella Shields
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A few days ago, while searching for the last green beans on the vines in our garden, the importance of the act of harvesting occurred to me. Some of the older beans were large and would not be as delicious to eat. They had missed being picked earlier because they were hidden among the leaves of the vine. Other beans were young and still very small. But as a “killing frost” was expected any day, I harvested the young ones as well. While I was contemplating my little cup of beans, I became aware that each bean carried the seeds for a future blossoming vine. When I came in from the garden, I looked up the meaning of “harvest” and “harvesting.” According to my internet search, the harvest is “the time when you reap what you sow” or “claim the consequences of an effort or activity.” I recalled my experience of last year’s failed bean crop, because the seeds I planted were too old to germinate in the soil. I discovered, the hard way, the importance of live seeds for the promise of a fruitful harvest.
On the shelf in my study, I found a copy of Thomas Merton’s book Seeds of Destruction. Published half a century ago in 1964, the seeds deadly to peace in our world remain the same: the insatiable drive for power, prestige and possessions throughout our world. James O’Dea in his book Cultivating Peace (2012) challenges those of us seeking to be peace makers to cultivate compassion in our own lives, while recognizing that “peace work is not about winning…it is about mastering one’s need to be the winner.”
Where can we find live seeds of hope for a world in which peace is possible? What old seeds do we need to discard, old ways of thinking, feeling and responding that we need to let go of? What new live seeds of hope do we need to plant lest we be caught in despair?
As I reflected on my experience at the 58th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which closed at the end of March, 2014, I was overwhelmed by all I had learned. My attempts to write a blog about my experience were overshadowed by the immensity of what I had seen and heard. I was stuck trying to decide where to begin. Then, this week, it occurred to me that I would have to post a series of blogs to begin to tap into the reality of the lives of women and girls throughout our world. I could not do so in two paragraphs. And so, I decided to begin with my awakening to the extensiveness of a rising form of slavery in our global world.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States and the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, both significant events in American history. I remember the summer of 1964, when I was completing a graduate course at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. As a northerner from New York City, I was shocked to discover the many residuals from the days of Negro slavery that still existed in the city of Memphis, one hundred years after the US Emancipation Proclamation. And then this year at the CSW, I was again shocked at learning the extent of sex trafficking of women and girls connected to major sporting events, not just abroad, but in my own home town of New York! My experience at the CSW awakened me to the enormous reality of sexual trafficking of women and girls, as well as children as young as age five, throughout the world. Some estimates indicate that 21 million people are currently victims of human greed. Promised money for their families or a chance to start a new life in another country, many of those vulnerable women and children believe the promises and are sold into slavery, from which there is no escape but death.
Many Nongovernmental agencies at the UN are bringing the extent and dark violence of this 21st Century slavery into the light. Our nineteen year old granddaughter will be working in Cambodia this summer in a shelter for children at risk for trafficking. I know she will return home with a new heart. .As I write this, the words of a poem I recently discovered by Mary Oliver came to me:
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it would break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
(New and Selected Poems, Vol.2)
As we celebrate Mother’s Day, may our hearts break open to the mothers and children throughout the world who have lost their lives to slavery and “never close again” to mothers and children everywhere.
In the past, November was a time of remembered loss and sadness for me. I associated the change in the weather with the trauma of emergency surgery when I was three years old. Then, four years ago, we lost our daughter in the month of November. What touches my spirit most is the gradual loss of daylight and the increasing hours of darkness! Now, as I sweep the leaves from the porch onto the soil below, I remember that each leaf is fulfilling its destiny to nourish the soil for the return of spring
Our neighbor’s six year old granddaughter taught me an important November lesson. As she helped her grandfather gather the fallen leaves, she picked up each one and looked at it reverently before she placed it gently in the leaf bag. She reminded me of the precious beauty of each leaf, now about to be reduced to mulch as nourishment for what is waiting in the soil
As I covered the tulip bulbs planted in our daughter’s memorial garden with a blanket of leaves, I did so with a new reverence. May the old losses find their way to the breakthrough into new life… each leaf precious, each life precious for the life to follow. Each leaf sacred, returning whatever it has left to the tree that it served so long—bringing what was needed from the sun to nourish the tree and transforming what could be poisonous (carbon dioxide) to oxygenated air for the life around it.
Every leaf precious, every life precious for the life that is to come!
I remember Wendell Berry’s words: “…in quiet heart and in eye clear. What (I) need is here!”
For this, I am grateful, this Thanksgiving Day!
For me, October is always a special time of celebrating life. My father and four of our grandchildren were born in October. In addition, it is also the month in which Grandparent’s Day is honored in many parts of the world.
October 24th, was the 68th anniversary of the ratification of the Charter of the United Nations, which has as its core a commitment: “to keep peace throughout the world; to develop friendly relations among nations; to help nations work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease and illiteracy, and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms.”
According to a recently publicized Amnesty International Study, this October is also the first anniversary of the death of a 68 year old Pakistani grandmother struck down by an American missile (drone) as she picked vegetables in a field with her grandchildren, who were also injured!
As I ponder the 68 year commitment of the United Nations and the 68 years of the grandmother’s life, I am overcome with disbelief and grief! Not just for the grandmother, but also for her grandchildren, who witnessed her being blown apart in their garden and who were also injured in body and spirit. How are they to ever believe that they are safe anywhere in this world?
One of the performances this past year at the Children’s Peace Theatre in Toronto (which Eldon and I helped co-found in the year 2000) bore the title: “If Violence is the Answer, We Have Asked the Wrong Question!”
In my grief, as I read the story of the Pakistani grandmother, Mamana Bibi, the refrain from a 1960’s song from my youth came back to me: “WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?”
I will always remember a poignant story my father shared about his boyhood years in conflict torn Ireland. One morning, my grandmother took him by the hand and brought him to the backfield of their farm where a young man lay dead after a battle with British soldiers. She said to my father: Do you see this young man? No mother should ever have to endure this pain! Julia Ward Howe, who initiated a Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1872, agreed with my grandmother. Julia realized her dream of establishing an international Mother’s Day for Peace to focus on the urgent need for a nonviolent resolution of conflict and war. She wrote: “Arise all women who have hearts…. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs”. To reach women across the world, Julia had the proclamation translated into five languages. For the following thirty years, Mother’s Day for Peace was celebrated on June 2. It was changed in 1913 by the US Congress to the second Sunday in May and the words “for Peace” were dropped!
As mothers and women everywhere the time has come to reclaim the purpose for which Mother’s Day was founded more than 140 years ago. How can we respond now to Julia’s urgent challenge to “address the means whereby the great human family can live in peace?”
What if each of us asked not to be given flowers this Mother’s Day (as the Florist Review was once quoted as declaring Mother’s Day a holiday to be exploited!) Instead, how about asking for the gift of a contribution in our name to a group or organization that supports peace in our world? (I am asking for the Mother’s Day gift of a donation to the Children’s Peace Theatre in Toronto). What about you? What groups or organizations would you recommend? What other ideas do you have for women “who have hearts” to “arise” and restore Mother’s Day to once again be Mother’s Day for Peace? I know that Julia and my grandmother will be pleased!
The root of the word “courage” is “coeur”, which translated means “heart.” To act with courage basically means to respond with heart. Today, we celebrate the courage of thousands of men and women: firefighters, police, and many others who responded with heart to save the lives of those trapped in the collapsing World Trade Center buildings. What is this deep instinct in us that fires our hearts to save the lives of others in danger? Is it some deep conviction that life is a precious gift? Is it an acknowledgement rooted in compassion—the realization that we are all one in the One, who we call God, Allah, Yahweh, or the Principle of Being? How is it then that throughout our world we still kill one another in the name of that same God? What has so “hardened our hearts,” the same hearts that are the birthing place of courage and compassion? Today, we celebrate courage, especially the courage of those who gave their lives that others might live. What commitment can I personally make today to nourish and sustain life around me and to refuse to be caught in the vortex of violence in my own life? Perhaps, that is the greatest tribute I can pay to those who gave their lives for others eleven years ago.
Last week, I had the privilege of being part of the 56th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, at the UN headquarters in New York City. Thousands of women and girls (and some men and boys) gathered to explore the obstacles to achieving full human rights for women and girls, particularly those in rural areas of the world. The day before the formal opening of the Commission, thousands of people representing Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) met to begin networking with one another. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Leymah Gbowee, shared her experience of breaking through the barriers to peace in her home country of Liberia. Her courage in gathering women of different religious faiths to stand with her, and demand peace and justice for their people set the tone for a week of sharing stories: successes and failures in the pursuit of justice for women and girls throughout the world. This morning, women and girls, and some courageous men and boys, assembled at the corner of East 42nd Street and First Avenue to march under the banner of Global Women for Equality, Development and Peace. I experienced feelings of regret that I was not able to join them, and then I noticed something surprising in my garden. Hundreds of snow drops had worked their way through ice, snow and layers of leaves to hold their heads high in the morning sun! My mother, a strong advocate for women’s rights, planted them more than forty years ago. Since then they have multiplied, finding their way across the garden, beyond where they were originally planted. This morning, they appeared triumphant in their determination to break through to their early blooming and announce their triumph over what otherwise would appear to be insurmountable for so small and apparently delicate a plant! I cried and then laughed as I thought of the hundreds of women and girls marching in New York City today and across the world, in remembrance of International Women’s Day. Their commitment and determination to triumph over what may seem to be insurmountable obstacles to bring about justice for women everywhere, evident as they raised their faces to the morning sun.
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March 8, International Women’s Day: Breaking Through Obstacles to Justice as of 1/1/1900
As the days get shorter and the nights longer, I am aware of some deep primitive part of myself that longs for the light to return. My Irish ancestors built a giant mound on the River Boyne oriented to the return of the sun. I visited there twice, each time overwhelmed by their dedication and engineering skills in capturing the first light of sunrise on the morning of the winter solstice. Through a small opening over the entrance, the sun’s rays travel through the vast domed structure to light up a triple spiral etched on the far wall. There are various interpretations of the meaning of the spiral, some of them referring to the release of the dead whose ashes were buried there. I visited the remains of a similar monument to the return of the sun in Machu Pichu, Peru. The two winter celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah are about the return of the Light that will never go out. But why are we so afraid of the dark? Several nights ago at the time of the new (dark) moon, I looked out to see the sky full of millions of stars falling over the horizon. They were so low in the sky that they appeared to be hanging in the evergreens like Christmas trees lights. It occurred to me that, although I know the stars are there, I can’t see them when the moon is bright and lighting the sky. The breath-taking beauty of the planets and stars of the winter sky can only be seen in the dark. As I looked up at the sky through the roof windows, I realized that when I am afraid of the dark, this is the beauty I never see! Letting go of the fear of the dark is also about letting go of the fear of the unknown and the fear of death, which will come in time to each of us. Recently, a friend sent me a copy of a poem by Mary Oliver titled: Messenger, which spoke to my fear of the dark and my limited lifespan: “Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” In this season of celebrating the Light, may we be astonished by the beauty waiting for us in the dark places we have yet to discover.
On the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, all of the memories of that day come back to me as if they happened yesterday. I was getting ready to go to my office when I heard a knock on the door. One of the members of our Centre community had just called with the news that a plane had hit one of the buildings of the World Trade Center in New York. Sixteen children from our Children’s Peace Theatre had just left Toronto on a train to New York City. They were scheduled to perform the next day at the United Nations opening ceremonies for the Decade of Peace for Children of the World. I was to fly out that evening and meet them there. The Centre Administrator was concerned about what she should tell the children’s parents if they heard the news and called. As a native New Yorker, I naively responded: “Tell them not to worry, the children will be safe. The United Nations building is uptown and not near the World Trade Center.” For reassurance I added: “Anyway, no plane could accidently hit the tower, as there is plenty of space around it. It must be a terrorist act, but don’t worry the New York City Police and Fire Department are trained to deal with terrorist actions.” Little did I know!
Then one after another as my psychotherapy clients came in for their sessions, I heard the rest of the story. By the time I learned of the collapse of the second tower and then news of the plane that went down in Western Pennsylvania, I was overcome with grief and fear. Where were our children? All attempts to reach the group by cell phone failed. Just before they were stopped at the US-Canadian border, we were able to make contact with the Artistic Director and tell him what had happened. He found a school bus driver who was willing to drive the children and their guides back to our Centre in Toronto. They invited other stranded passengers, including several Muslim men in turbans, to go back with them on the bus. Although the children were disappointed that they could not go on to New York to perform at the UN, their first reaction was shock. One of the little Muslim girls in our Children’s Peace Theatre said: “If only they had waited and listened to the children, maybe they would not have done this!”
We asked permission of the children’s parents and school to have the children come to the Centre for de-briefing that week, as they were already scheduled to be away. The next day, after a morning session helping the children express their reactions to what had happened, we gave them a break. After a brief time outside, they came in all excited and invited all of the adults outdoors. They had gathered long branches from the woods, which they made into a teepee-shaped Prayer Hut. Each child led an adult by the hand into the hut, which required that we bend very low to enter. Once inside, Muslim, Christian and Jewish children prayed for peace and asked each adult to do the same. Then they led us down a hill to a large stone. They asked us to lay our hands on the stone and let go of our anger toward those who had destroyed the towers and to pray for forgiveness and peace for our world. One young girl exclaimed: “Look at our hands, they are all different colors!” That day, the children’s beautiful ritual of forgiveness was the first step in my own healing process. Today, although I am far away from that stone in the woods, I will lay my hand upon a stone and pray once again for the gift of forgiveness and peace for our world.
0 Comments on September 11: “And a Little Child Shall Lead them…” as of 1/1/1900
1 Comments on Life in the Cracks, last added: 7/15/2011
Thank you, Marcella. Continue to inform us as you stand close to the pulse of the awful realization that in 2014 our girls are still not loved enough. When greed and power interfere, it is a battle indeed to protect our young and to teach respect for their bodies and spirits.