ORDER FORM | HOME PAGE | SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
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Two Articles By Susan McNeal Velasquez |
"I learned to make my mind large as the Universe is large so that there is room for paradoxes."- Maxine Hong Kingston, from The Woman Warrior
A mother's worst nightmare is that she will lose her child.
During the nine month pregnancy when disturbing dreams surface, the topic often revolves around an inability to find the baby or protect the baby from harm. Babies live those nine months nestled literally under a mother's heart. That bond is never broken.
The triumphs and tribulations of our children keep us in a state of vulnerability because this bond runs so deep. Our only choices are to shut our hearts down from feeling, which creates a state of numbness, or to open to the feelings and grieve the pain of how insignificant our sphere of control really is.
When we close our hearts, short term, we can function as though we are in control. When we open to the pain that is created when we care and we don't know the answers and are helpless to change the outcomes, compassion is born.
Tuesday's tragedy has created a massive wound in the hearts of mothers around the world.
Two of my daughters live in New York. My Tuesday morning was spent relentlessly dialing their numbers until I found them and could hear their voices and know they were safe.
My phone rang all day, hearing from family and friends who were concerned. I know that most of you spent the day similarly, making sure that those close to your heart were okay.
I have a dear friend who lives in Europe. She is the mother of four children also; two boys and two girls. When I spoke with her Tuesday, she was in France and asked me for a favor. "Susan, my son is in Washington D.C. and I cannot find him. I cannot get through on the phone lines. Would you try to connect with him?"
I could hear her apprehension, feel her anxiety. I began the calling ritual until finally the connection was made. "Hello?" "Hi, Mohammed, it's Susan. Your Mother is looking for you."
My friend and her family are Arabs. As Mohammed and I spoke, he was walking past the Pentagon, still in flames, and beginning a seven mile walk to his home in Georgetown.
My heart felt relieved to hear his voice. For a moment, I was his mother separated from my child and aware that in this crazy, tragic time ignorance married to the drive that we all have to want to be in control could create a volatile situation against anyone who is not "American."
Everyone is someone's child.
There are broken hearts nationally and internationally as a result of the events in New York and Washington D.C.
Hopefully, we will allow the seeds of compassion to grow by acknowledging our collective pain rather than taking the safer but less productive route of fashioning our heart hurts into laser beams of external hate and revenge.
"To mourn is to be extraordinarily vulnerable. It is to be at the mercy of inside feelings and outside events in a way most of us have not been since early childhood." - Christian McEwen
Today I am required to reach into myself to find a centered place to operate from. The place I took for granted last week no longer exists and the task of writing today is looming large.
I have so many questions and so few answers.
I want to wear red, white and blue and meld into being a "Patriotic American." Then I cringe at the "We'll smoke them out, hunt them down and kill them" mentality. My mother's heart shrinks back from the notion of more dead bodies and grieving, shattered lives across the globe.
Do I vote for no action? No. War? No. Platitudes and naïve posturing? No. Nothing feels acceptable in the good guy/bad guy, right/wrong grab bag that is held out before us.
I wish that it were possible to bring together all the seven year olds of the world and borrow their new eyes to discover what their worlds look, feel, smell and taste like and what experiences envelope them daily.
What would they communicate that would give us each a glimpse of the experiences they are presently living as a result of our combined actions to date?
I think we would see vulnerability, clarity, frankness and forthrightness as well as an astonishing amount of accumulated pain, confusion, fear and uncertainty.
The only difference between them and us is how skilled we have become in numbing and blocking our lack of consciousness from ourselves and each other and the years we have had to accomplish that disconnection.
Given the information we have and the evidence so overwhelmingly put before us, war seems inevitable. Given that our current dictionaries define compassion and therefore any actions that proceed from that grounding as weak, tenderhearted, pitiful ramblings of the weak-minded and ineffectual who live in the clouds of denial, our course seems set toward destruction.
"No matter what rallying cries the orators give to the people who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles." - Margaret Mitchell
Why is it always necessary to make the world safe for democracy but never safe for children?
"Our human situation no longer permits us to make armed dichotomies between those who are good and those who are evil, those who are right and those who are wrong. The first blow dealt to the enemy's children will sign the death warrant of our own." - Margaret Mead.
I pray that a course of action will surface that will allow us to respond as a genuine world power co-acting with other leaders around the globe and being ever mindful of power's twin--responsibility.
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Susan McNeal Velasquez writes and produces seminars on the topic of UNLEASH THE POWER OF YOUR INTUITION. She has been facilitating personal development seminars for 29 years. To request a brochure on local seminars, reach her at: (949) 494-7773 or SusanVelas (at) aol.com
