Apple Farm Blog

Wisdom and Voice

2/13/2019

Response from Apple Farm Writer Mary Theis. Mary guides the Apple Farm Writing Group and lives near Chicago.

Of course, the loudest voice declares: “I am getting old. My body is changing – and I don’t like it.  I don’t like how it looks and how it feels.”

And I hear my poor body responding: “Don’t you love me?  After all I have done for you? I have served you well.”  (This is one oracle – wisdom source, the body itself).

Then another voice – my soul crying: “I have so much to do – so much unlived life. Why am I awakening so late?  There won’t be enough time.”

And the Spirit says: “I am ageless and I do not see death on the horizon.”  And it reassures me that: “What I can do is enough. I only have to continue to listen and respond as best I can.  I will never finish, and do not need to finish.”
I am listening for/to the voice that lies deep within. Sometimes, when I am able to clear the “dross” I can actually hear it, but mostly I feel it as an impulse to do a certain thing, or refrain from doing what I feel an urgency to do, or move in a certain direction. And I don’t understand why I am being guided in this way, but am at my best when I trust those impulses/voices.

There is an image that reflects how this trusting comes about in me. It is an image of large, black talons releasing my heart.  I interpret the talons as representing the lifelong effort of something in me to control everything in order to protect me. Finally, as old age approaches, I can envision those talons releasing my heart so it can sing.

The response needed changes from day to day. Sometimes I feel called to express what I am learning as an image. I can allow it to unfold in this manner and understand it in a new way.

Sometimes it is a poem that shows the truth.

And sometimes, perhaps the most difficult, is by showing who I am; by trusting and acting on those impulses that I know are true. In this way, I may use my new-found understanding to deepen my work and relationships.  Sometimes, for all of us, as we are true to ourselves in this way, those we touch are helped to discover their own Wisdom and Voice.

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Divining

2/8/2019

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Response from Apple Farm Writer Jo Marie Thompson from Kevala retreat in Wisconsin

I.
The pronouncement of an oracle is sought -
and on her terms – perhaps on the
seventh day of every lunar month,
and only by those who have
sacrificed plenty and well.

The ravings of a prophet
are stringently avoided
though revered on arrival –
issuing from the throat
of a roundly disturbed man to
his unsettled audience, cringing
down the funnel of history.

Now a seer is another matter,
with a livelihood to earn and clients
to satisfy, but riding hard
after God’s hound nonetheless.

An omen is tender and close -
arriving in a cloak of silence
near the edge of vision
in one unchosen moment -
the leading edge of
the eclipse of what was
by the white heat
of knowing.

The Muse is closer still
and more dear.
What poet hasn’t felt
the whisper of a poem
arriving, left a list undone,
dishes stacked in a sink while
she leans in hard for an
hour or a week, straining to hear?

The augury of The Dream is famous
in my family, and perhaps in yours,
and also among anxious mothers
everywhere with children abroad.
I once dreamed of an acquaintance
on a bus in Russia, my dreaming self
knew that because we were in Russia
I would later marry him. And I did.
And my waking self still confounds
at the meaning of Russia in the
meaning of Marriage. [...]

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Thoughts On Noah's Ark

4/1/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER,  Marlene Sarle. Marlene is from Michigan and Arizona.

We all know the story of Noah’s Ark. Humankind had become so naughty—evil is what the story says—that God’s mercy, which endures forever, hit a brick wall. God was angry, and the people had to be punished, wiped out, drowned to death. But God’s mercy, which endures forever, which had hit a brick wall, found a soft spot in the wall. A male and female of every kind of animal would be saved. Noah’s family would be saved. We got a second chance. God told Noah to build an ark, a really big boat, load it with animals of every kind, male and female, clean and unclean, crawling and flying. It seems that the swimming creatures had a good chance of surviving.  He was to load his family and apparently lots of food. We are not told that mana fell daily from the ceilings. Forty days later all the people and animals outside the ark were dead, and God’s wrath was assuaged. God hung a rainbow in the sky as a promise never to do that again.
This is not the simple and easy story that many of us grew up with. It is difficult to contemplate the God we love, the God who loves us, being so angry with us that he would kill most of us. This is the same God who killed his own son so that he would not have to kill us off again. But, of course, he does kill us again, in eternal flames, if we don’t conform exactly to his demands. This is our example of parenthood and caring for and loving our fellow humans. If we learn nothing from this story, we do get a big dose of paradox. Apparently exclusive truths can both be true. The Story of Noah’s Ark might be a teacher as we face challenging questions and paradox in our times.
God told Noah to lead the animals onto the ark. Then God shut the door. Noah, his family, and the animals were shut in together on the ark. It began to rain. It rained for forty days and forty nights. Noah found grace in God’s eyes, but was his whole family innocent? Shut up in that boat with the dark storm raging, were they all sweet, kind, and polite to each other during that forty-day cruise? I would guess there were some stressful, testy moments. And there was no early disembarkation at an alternative port.
It may feel like we, currently, are sailing in a dark, windy, rainy storm. God has closed the door, and we are shut up together. We are not sinless. We are not always sweet, kind, and polite to each other. We struggle with how to sail this ship and survive the storm. The story does not provide us with secrets and clues of living together.  But we need the willingness to seek answers. It is still ours to figure out. We are in this together and are not deboarding until the storm is over and the door is opened.
Lest we on the ark become too self-focused, we might consider those sinners who were not allowed on the ark, but were left out in the rain to drown, the castaways. Were the children really more sinful than all of Noah’s family? Were they really excluded from the ark because they didn’t meet God’s criteria? It feels familiar in these times when those who don’t meet expectations are excluded, when children, whom we often call “the innocents”, are disallowed food, shelter, education, medical care, and a safe haven from storms because we only take care of our own and those whom we deem worthy. They must, in their rebuff, feel akin to those poor souls who were shut out of the ark and left to drown.
If we are willing, we might just see the dark side of God in ourselves—the vengeful, the vindictive. Is this all there is to see? It feels like living with no answers, with paradox. In our deepest hearts we don’t want to believe that this is all there is. The unknown, the unreconciled, is not satisfying. Rilke suggested that we “live the questions”, and that is what we must do. Noah’s story and our story may for a long time be only partly resolved. Living with this plight can restrict our consciousness and our souls or it can expand our consciousness and our souls. We might also consider what Jung/Edinger said about Job’s testing: God wanted Job to see God. How can we see God or seek God in the midst of current events?
There is more to the story. God put a rainbow in the sky as a promise that he would not destroy humankind again. Did God have regrets? This may have been an evolutionary moment in the development of God. Jesus was another moment in the evolution of God. He brought a new message. No longer would the undesirable be excluded.
I read recently of six times that Jesus contradicted the Old Testament. For example, Deuteronomy 19:21 says “Show no pity: life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth…” Jesus rebutted this directive by saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ But I say unto you, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you…’”
In the midst of raging storms of our times, we may sense an evolutionary moment on the horizon. People are rising up to disavow vindictive exclusion, violence, and injustice. The rainbow was a promise of a new day. Maybe we need a new symbol to replace the rainbow, to express a new way of being in the world. One that would embrace the stranger and alien, the poor, children and elderly, the sick and imprisoned; that would protect diversity and dignity; that would be spacious enough to allow the whole of humanity and all that is onto the ark.

M. Sarle 03/18

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Cinderella

3/20/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER,  Barbra Goering. Barbra lives in Chicago.

The Cinderella story is so ubiquitous, has so many versions, and is so embedded in our popular culture that I initially found it hard to discuss as a “tale” with a Jungian perspective. But I wanted to try, because this is the story that for some time was played out, over and over again, by my granddaughter “M” as she turned from four to five. I was fascinated by the elements that caught her—and struck by the elements that she didn’t seem to care about at all.
Here is the “M” version of Cinderella—after several storybook variations and of course the Disney movie:

Cinderella lived with her mean stepmother and mean stepsisters. They made her do all the work in the house!  The stepmother made her serve breakfast in bed, and do all the wash, and clean everything, and she was never nice to Cinderella! But Cinderella never got mad. She was good and kind. And she loved all the animals in the house (stepmother’s cat possibly excepted).
She wanted to go to the ball, but the mean stepmother would not let her.  But the fairy godmother came and turned the pumpkin into a coach and gave her a beautiful dress and she went to the ball.
At the ball she was nice to the stepsisters and gave them oranges and lemons. No one knew who she was, but they knew that she was the most beautiful.  She danced with the prince and then ran away when the clock struck. She left her slipper!
They tried the slipper on everyone but only when they got to Cinderella did it fit!  She got the beautiful dress and was happy.

We acted this story out over and over.  The focus was on the stepmother—played by Grandma—who would lie on the bed, shouting orders and sneering.  Cinderella (M) would rush to do all the jobs and also take care of the little animals who loved her. The stepmother and stepsisters would deny her the ball and she would cry, brokenhearted. Then came the fairy godmother, a roundup of the raw elements of the coach and horses, and off to the ball.
M loved to go back again and again to act out the service to the shadow stepmother with unwearying frequency.  As she worked on the hard, dull tasks set for her, she also surrounded herself with the little animals, some of them considered vermin, connecting her to the basics of life.  In my various supporting roles, I tried to follow her cues.  The stepmother perpetually had breakfast in bed while pointing out more menial jobs to do. The godmother sent Cinderella herself scrambling for the materials to be transformed--the pumpkin, the mice, the rats, and the lizards—before the magic could happen.  The stepsisters at the ball had to enact amazement and be thrilled when the strange guest presented them with oranges and lemons.
The prince barely intrudes into M’s version of the story. Instead, Cinderella has her transformation and her moment of approach and generosity to the stepsisters at the ball before the clock strikes. And again, the prince does not cut much of a figure at the end; Cinderella simply comes into her own and proves her worth, in M’s version.   Revenge against her persecutors isn’t much of a theme; instead, Cinderella shines for a moment, then it’s back to the beginning of the story to see what else can come out of it.
Cinderella has her work cut out for her in M’s version of the story.  The toil in the dark, the scramble for the raw materials of change, and the effort to approach the hostile sisters form the story.   The happy denouement has its moment, then the child wants to delve back again into the hard work of facing the stepmother, transforming, approaching the shadow stepsisters, and finding, again, the lost shoe.
In my own meditations I am struck again and again by the problem of responding to the power impulse.  The urge to power and revenge is so potent.  I feel that M is working through a way to encounter the raw urge to power, and to work through the desire we all have to exact revenge when we are bludgeoned by others (within or without) grabbing for dominance.  This may be systemic in the outside or the inner world.  With the help of the little animals, and her own resilience, Cinderella is able to transform the scenario into her own story of love and triumph. But the work continues, over and over again. That should not be forgotten. The story is really never over, something that little M seemed to grasp, and even to relish.
M has moved on to other stories now. I am still contemplating the way she illuminated this common fairy tale.

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The Sacrificial Swine

3/14/2018

3 Comments

FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Amy Carpenter-Leugs. Amy lives in Michigan

To reflect on our times, I chose the allegory of The Sacrificial Swine shared in The Way Of Chuang Tzu, interpreted by Thomas Merton. The story is here: https://tinyurl.com/sacrificialswine

It is this line that caught my attention, after the Grand Augur has decided that, though the pigs would prefer a long life of coarse feed in simple pens, rather than being sacrificed, it is a nobler existence - and it mirrors his own - to have finery and honors, even at the cost of untimely death. “So he decided against the pigs’ point of view, and adopted his own point of view, both for himself and for the pigs also.”
In the past year I have been on a journey prompted by the recent spate of police shootings of Black folks, as well as the 2016 presidential election and its outcome. I have taken stock of my enormous privilege as a white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied, English-speaking citizen of the U.S. I am also cisgender (I identify with the gender I was assigned at birth), and I have materially benefited from settler colonialism and theft against the indigenous peoples of the land where I live: more privilege.
I have committed to learning more and engaging more in grassroots anti-oppression work, much of it in supporting communities of color as they face over-policing, incarceration, detention, and deportation.
In the past year, I have been thinking a lot about the points of view that those of us with privilege in the U.S. empire choose to adopt, “both for ourselves and for [others] also.”
I think particularly of our continued engagement in communities of the Global South (often known as “Third World Nations”). How noble, we could say along with the Grand Augur, to have their borders drawn by the West, and their oil and other resources extracted for the West’s finery … all while their land, culture, and self-determination are destroyed in the process.
I think of communities like Apple Farm, committed to symbolic, inner life. As members of American society, we are complicit, even if unknowingly, in the tradition of empire the last 500 years. To echo Chuang Tzu’s critique, how noble, for indigenous people to have their mythologies and symbols extracted for our essential soul work - while their families and communities have been systematically oppressed and killed.
Should we be concerned about this? If so, how should we proceed?

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The Wolves Within

3/6/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER,  John Stempien. John lives in southwest, Michigan

There is a legend known by variant titles: Which one do you feed, Grandfather Tells, The Wolves Within, and Tale Of Two Wolves. Its origin is currently unknown. Some have attributed it as a Cherokee legend.

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego. The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
  The old chief simply replied, "The one you feed."

I am reminded of Helen Luke’s insight about this inner struggle and how it plays out in our outer world, specifically, how the individual responds to what he deems evil in a turbulent time. She writes in Dark Wood to White Rose, “Evil must indeed be exposed, and denounced, and fought by word and action, but it is never conquered by mere exposure nor by the passion of rejection nor by action alone, necessary as these things are. It becomes powerless before one thing only, which is the certainty of a man who, while evading nothing of the dark facts, asserts and acts out of the joy at the heart of life. This is not cheap optimism, nor has it to do with superficial happiness. It is a kind of certainty that can never be born out of evasion; indeed, those who do not know it are the ones who evade, for in some way they have refused or have been unable to face the conscious ‘journey into self.’ " (p. xiv.)
May we continue to feed ourselves, “the joy at the heart of life.”

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The Desolate Island

2/26/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER,  Jo Marie Thompson. Jo Marie lives in Norwalk, WI

Idries Shah recounts the tale of The Desolate Island in his collection “World Tales.” It appears in various sources from Egypt, the Talmud and Spain as well as a story written in the 7th century by the monk John of Damascus.  Much of the material is believed to have originated in Buddhist sources. It has traditionally been seen as an allegory to instill energy for righteous deeds and spiritual labor during this lifetime, in order to reap the rewards of the heavenly realm. It tells the story of a slave freed by a generous master and set sail on a boat filled with treasures. A storm arises however, and the boat is destroyed along with all the crew. Only the former slave survives, cast up naked on an island. The citizens of the island promptly declare the former slave their king, dressing him in robes. He wonders at his good luck and questions his benefactors. A wise man tells him he has arrived in a realm of spirits. The spirits petitioned their God to send a Son of Man to rule them. Every year their God provides a man to serve as king. After the King’s one year rule, he is stripped naked and banished to a desolate island. The King questions the wise man further: “Oh Spirit of Wisdom, how do I face what is to come?” The Spirit of Wisdom replies “Naked you came among us, and naked you will leave. At present you are King, and may do whatever you please. Therefore, send workmen to the island, and let them build houses and prepare the land, and make the surroundings beautiful. The barren soil will be turned into fruitful fields, people will go there to live, and you will have established a new kingdom for yourself. Your own subjects will be waiting to welcome you when you arrive. The year is short; the work is long: therefore be earnest and energetic.”  The King follows this advice. The day arrives and he is placed naked on a ship, sails set for the island. When he approached its shore, however, the people who he had sent ahead came forward to welcome him with music, song, and great joy. They made him ruler, and he lived ever after in peace.
I have both a narrative and a poetic response to the fable. First the narrative:

  This fable speaks to me of the many and inevitable routes from inner slavery to freedom, from power back to helplessness. And of the routes to a different kind of peace. Although the fable itself charts a fairly linear progression through these states, it of course points to the many levels at which we experience these dynamics as recurring themes: We find them repeatedly in the changing tides of our lives, just as we find them in our central journey that delivers us from our prime of health and actors in the world, to the helplessness and potentially desolate island of age. For those of us involved in the fable’s inner work, we experience these states cyclically in our many arrivals at insight, confidence, numinosity, and even ecstatic moments - only to be banished naked again on the rocks, our only hope being the prior integration of true wisdom. In our particular historical moment this fable may also speak to our common experience as citizens in a powerful Kingly empire teetering on the edge of collapse (both our national empire and our global Anthropocene empire)...

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The Spirit in the Bottle–A Fairy-tale for Our Time

2/21/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Mary Theis. Mary lives lives in the Chicago area (and two days weekly at Apple Farm).

Once upon time, there was an old woodcutter and his young son. The woodcutter always wanted his son to go to school but they didn't have enough money, and after a few years he had to come home. The son insisted on going to the woods to work with his father, but the father didn't think he could handle the hard work. During a lunch break, instead of resting, he defied his father and went wandering through the forest, where he heard a voice saying it was trapped at the bottom of the tree. There he saw a bottle, but when he opened it a giant demon sprang out and said it would break his neck and kill him. The young woodcutter then challenged that the demon spirit did not have the ability to get back in the bottle. So the spirit, to show that he really could do whatever he wanted, re-entered the bottle to show the boy how strong he was, and the boy stopped the bottle up again. The demon, shocked, began begging the woodcutter's son to open the bottle again, but he refused unless the spirit promised to benefit the boy.
The spirit pleaded with him and offered to make him rich. The boy decided it was worth the risk and released the demon. The spirit gave him a special cloth with one side that would turn any object into pure silver and the other side that would heal any wound. After turning his axe into silver, he tried to cut a tree in front of his father but bent the axe head. The father was extremely disappointed that he would have to replace the axe, which belonged to his neighbor. The boy went to sell the axe head and made 400 times more money than he needed to pay for the broken axe, and finally he told his father the story of the spirit in the bottle.
After that the father recognized that the boy's cleverness had made them rich and was happy. The boy went back to school to become a doctor and became one of the most successful and famous doctors with the help of his magical cloth that healed wounds.  (Summary taken from Wikipedia)

My husband Tom and I began coming to Apple Farm as members of the “young people’s group” around 1970.  We each began our inner journeys at that time, working on our dreams with the founders of the Farm community at the same time as we were beginning our married life and starting a family.
We decided that we wanted a more focused time of exploring Jungian psychology–exploring our dreams and discovering our inner and outer paths in the world.  So, in the fall of 1972, we took our toddler son and went to study at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland.  We each began analysis.
The woman I was working with in analysis, Jane Walgren, told me that she thought the fairy-tale “The Spirit in the Bottle” ( though the name I remembered was “The Woodcutter’s Son”) -  was “my” fairy-tale.
In the tale, a young man and his father have done all they can to launch the young man on his life.  But, as in all fairy-tales, as in life, they run into an insurmountable problem – they run out of money - which symbolizes the energy that is needed to live one’s life.  So, the young man comes home to help his father with his woodcutting.  He becomes tired and wanders off and “magically” finds a bottle with a genie trapped inside.  Being kind, and naïve, he frees the genie only to have his life threatened by the angry spirit.  Now, what could the boy do?  He certainly could not overpower the creature, so he used his wits to trick the genie into returning to his place of entrapment.  Of course, then the genie has to bargain for his release and the young man will not free the genie until his is promised a precious gift.  It is the gift of wealth – enough for his father and him to live comfortably and for him to pursue his studies to become a doctor – and the gift of the ability to heal.
Now, at age 70, this story still speaks to me and I think it has relevance to all of us in these times.  We continue to be called to the task of containing and negotiating with this strong, masculine spirit, in order to protect ourselves from this incredibly powerful, amoral aspect within us, and equally as important, to negotiate with him to obtain his gifts.
Whether we choose to go the route of working on our dreams, or find some other way to do this work, I believe it is imperative for each of us to come to terms with our “shadow” side, which is represented by the genie in the story.  This is an essential task, which we are each called to do.  We need to free up the creative energy that is hidden within, so that we can minimize the results of being unconscious of our shadow side, and have access to the gifts we have been given so we can use them to help bring some balance to the world around us.

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2019 WINTER WRITING BLOG THEME

Here, at the beginning of 2019:
a. What voices do you notice are getting your attention, whether by intent or default?
b. What Oracle/Voice/Wisdom source are you listening to or seeking?
c. What is the response that seems to be being wanted of you---an action, ritual, story, painting, prayer, poem, ceremony.

...it is in part by our response to the great stories of the world that we too can begin to find, each of us this individual story expressing the symbolic meaning behind the facts of our fate and behind the motives that determine the day-to-day choices of our lives. -Helen Luke, The Inner Story

2019 WINTER WRITING BLOG THEME

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