Blog Archives

Cinderella

3/20/2018

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

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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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...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