From an
article about the Yearning for Zion child abuse case:
“An expert in children in cults testified Friday that while the teen girls believed they were marrying out of free choice, it's a choice based on lessons they've had from birth.”
Of course, ALL of us who believe we have free choice are also operating based on assumptions/lessons we’ve learned since birth… how is this different?
Some lessons learned in the “cult” of America:
- a nuclear family comprised of a monogamous couple is right and moral
- independence = success: trusting other people is foolish, and asking for help is a sign of weakness
- food comes from the grocery store, and medicine comes from the doctor
I don’t mean to pose this question as a way of justifying whatever has been happening in that community of people (which currently seems unknown and unable to be judged until more information comes out) – I’m just using it to highlight our own indoctrination, which often goes unacknowledged (this is the sociology geek in me, still alive despite my choice to leave grad school).
Last night I though I might be starting the birth journey, and I panicked! So much nervousness and "But I haven't yet done..."
Thankfully, that was just a practice experience, and I got to see how I'm not being open and ready for it to come. So, my intention today and for the days to come is to seek full presence in the moment, to clear my To Do List with intention and ease, and dance, meditate, paint, breathe myself into the moment, into full acceptance of What Is. 
A friend just sent me an excerpt from an interview with Pete Seeger. I found it inspiring...
Sarah: One of your most famous songs is "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To everything there is a season)." What kind of time do you think we're in right now?
Pete: We are in a crisis time. I don't give us a chance of—well, you never can tell. There might be a little tribe somewhere in the world on some isolated island, but I see human beings wiping each other off the face of the earth. We've invented such weapons—not just nuclear weapons but chemical weapons and all sorts of things.... If there's a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!
(For the full interview go here:
http://tinyurl.com/yo84l5)
The friend who sent this to me described it as "large scale pessimism and small scale optimism". What a delightful balance to the pendulumming emotions I find myself having about our global situation! One day I'm filled with hope, and on others, with deep sadness and a sense of doom. Seeger's words remind me that BOTH are realistic, and that they can exist together without conflict.
Another friend recently re-started his blog, yet another chronicle of an ex-Oaker's (that's what ex-members of Twin Oaks are called) journey away from the commune. He's struggling with many of the same questions that I am, and I'm enjoying the way he shares his self-reflection. Find it here!
