AMERICAN ITALIAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
UCLA: NOVEMBER 2005
© copyright September 2005/April 2006/2007
by Chickie Farella, Performance Artist/Independent Scholar Women’s Spirituality
The Brutalization of the Human Race:
Assaults/Awakening/Miracles and Paying Attention.
I awakened to Women's Spirituality work twelve years and two divorces ago. While maintaining subservient roles in both marriages, one of violence and one of silence, I was brought out of the dark and into the light of the reality of all my relationships starting with the most important, God the Mother. She was someone from my labeled life as a Sicilian American Catholic female whom I had not been allowed to know aside from Mary, her daughter who played the part of Christ's subservient mother, so they say.
Next came my vivid awareness of the strength and unconditional love of my own mother, whom I had spent the first 43 years of my life completely ignoring. I am now fully aware of her sacredness, including the sacredness and contributions of all of the women in my family; most of whom remain totally clueless. The treasure of this revelation made me aware of the cluelessness of our own sacredness.
The excavation of my Sicilian roots began in the darkest of caves, in reading the signs written in the color red ochre, symbol of the blood of a woman, and in retracing the steps of Goddess Demetra in search of her daughter Proserpina across the blackness of Mt. Etna. This journey brought me to know the goal of my soul. That is to transform and sublimate my original anger into laughter, first concerning the spouses in my life, then the relationship between my mother and father, ultimately delivering to my female family the degree of their devotion. One might argue my awakening diminishes my respect for the men in my family and in my personal life. On the contrary, the discovery of She has assisted the redistribution of my notion of power verses respect within my family, and brought an improved sense of balance into my personal and professional relationships.
As you can see, I have taken a journey, however not exactly a guided tour led by academia America. So allow me to take you on a personal tour of a life of not so many accidental deaths. My traumas assaulted my long submerged memory, and manifested miracles!
There is a saying, To know where you are going, you’ve got to know where you have been. I believe that. So I went to Sicily. When I arrived in Agrigento, I could actually smell my maternal Grandma Carolina. She’s been dead for nearly 30 years, yet a combination of the scents of aquamarine and the Jergens lotion, she swore by, permeated the island’s air. It’s funny that I always defined her scent as “out doorsy,” yet it wasn’t until that moment I realized the faint moistness of her scent was that of being indigenous to the island of her home in Sicily. That scent led me through the streets that she walked, to the people she talked and ultimately discovering my mission in life. Everyone has one you know; and here, knowing, is the operative word. For me it has been the most difficult task in my life. Once I knew, or at least admitted to knowing, my life changed drastically. The path to admission came through a series of assaults through personal traumas, becoming attentive to sychronicities, serendipities, and ultimately to the understanding of the interconnectedness of all livings things. That was my miracle! The moment I knew who I was, where I fit, what my function, everything began to fall into place. I finally had the answer to the burning question, why? Once we allow ourselves the admission of the knowing of why, our personal path to happiness opens. My personal why became the discovery of my mother and all the mothers of my life. They were grandmothers, godmothers, aunts, cousins, and teachers leading me to the ultimate mother in me. Now you’re probably wondering how my first trip to Sicily could possibly create such a memory jog. It’s just an island. So what? The direct assaults of new aromas, flavors, and visuals infused my brain with the beginnings of a new catharsis. And that was my first mistake. Thinking these were new clues. The truth is they are very old. Remembering the truth for me has been the clue to the future.
This first trip with my second husband led us both into marital counseling and individual psycho therapy. There I was deciphering panic attacks at the age of 43, leading me to finally fess up my suppression of early childhood sexual intrusion imposed not by my family but by someone whose identity I have chosen to protect for 50 years against the advice of all my therapists. But my protection ultimately projected me straight to divorce court, a relocation from my Illinois residence to the southern California desert and the beginning of my obsession to get to the core of truth of who, what and why I am. I began to comprehend my personal polarities. For instance, I finally understood my second husband’s choice to crown me with the moniker of the “Angriest Woman In America,” why I continued to choose negative partnerships and why a big person would hurt a little person. That first self crucifixion allowed the serendipities and sychronicities to take hold.
My second assault or inspiration initiated from No Pictures for My Grave,1 by Susan Caperna Lloyd, who also had a Grandma Carolina whose picture is displayed on the book cover! A wonderful story of her determination and success of carrying the Black Madonna of Trapani, Sicily during Easter week; a male oriented ritual unsoiled by the hands of a woman. Lloyd’s journey that just happened to fall into my hands upon my return from my first Easter in Sicily, inspired me to begin my work in progress, Ciao Giulia. A story about three Chicago Sicilian American women who take a journey to Sicily to discover their cousin Giulia had been raped along and pressured to marry the rapist. A journey which led me to research and studies of multicultural feminist historian, Dr. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, author of the trilogy Liberazione Della Donna (Feminism In Italy), Black Madonnas, Dark Mother and her latest release, She Is Everywhere,2 to which I have been bestowed the honor of contributing an essay about paying attention.
My first glance at Feminism In Italy made me laugh at the thought of such a ludicrous concept. Feminism for me at that point was burning the bras in the seventies, Roe vs. Wade, which by the way was a law that saved my life the month it was passed in 1973, and women boycotting men only golf courses, all of which I couldn’t imagine happening in Italia. Feminism In Italy drop kicked me to into Birnbaum’s workshops, book lists and more lists, forcing me to go deeper within, jogging memories deeply submerged, pumping new life into my soul. The deeper I dug, the wounds widened, the concept of no pain no gain, began to fade the deep fog of my comfortable home of hibernating stuckness, forcing me to remember my passive acceptance of my Catholic upbringing So let us cut to that life.
I had 12 years of Catholic education, the first eight of which I was forced to attend Mass everyday except Saturday. I went to confession every 3 weeks. I remember when I was only 7 years old I had made my first confession to a strange man’s ear that I could barely see in a dark box. At the conclusion of this invasion of my privacy, on my way to the altar to do my penance, a big scary nun grabbed me by my nicely starched white uniform collar. She pulls me into her face unleashing that rotten guts nun’s breath, and says, “You weren’t in there long enough! You still have lots of sin on your soul,” as she shoved me back into the dark confessional to round up more sins.
Now, in those very early 60’s I also experienced the pain of a steel rat tail comb wrenching through my wonderfully Just Wonderful hair sprayed bubble head, yet I always thanked God I was a girl. There was a strange thing the priestess wannabes had about controlling male urinary habits. We stood in line to go two designated times a day. However, if for any reason a young male would have the “urge” at an undesignated lavatory time, he was required to a) raise his hand, and b) his ears must be flushed red. If not, their holy priestessness’s personally took them by the hand to the lavatory and when they returned, you can bet your Sicilian ‘scarole their ears were red. Their entire little faces were rosied and wet with tears, with one hand rubbing their seven year old behinds. Even though I was unsure about the details, I always knew the basics of the dark corners of the boys lavatory, yet I remained passive. (Oh and by the way, there was no excuse; for me being passive that is. How many times have you read about 3 year olds dialing 911 for help? Ahhh! The polar power of the black cloth and white collar!)
It was not unlike my passiveness upon seeing my first black madonna in Calabria before my awakening. I remember initial surprise then quickly moved to acceptance. Why? Because I always knew.
My so called “best private all girl high school” wasn’t the best, just one of the most expensive. The order of the Blessed Virgin Mary nuns, were the first, I believe in Chicago, to shed their habits, and their life in a beautiful convent. They wanted to wear wigs. They wanted their own apartments for which we helped pay their rent so that they could “rehabilitate the neighborhood?” One by one they began to move out of the convent into apartments, showed their curves, popped their cherries and popped back into secular life. They were sorta kinda, kinda sorta, the precursors of the women in the seventies I watched dump their bras in dumpsters from my job at the National Safety Council accounting department window overlooking Michigan Ave in front of the famous Equitable Building in Chicago. (and I just got that serendipity at this very moment as I write because I just paid attention and wonder if that was planned?)
Anyway, we could barely afford the raise in tuition, because now the school had to hire lay teachers. For two years, I worked nearly full time hours to help pay tuition. When before you could say, “Who in the hell left the gate open?” The Holy Spirit dive bombed and evacuated the convent. But it was worth it. Look at the legacy! They taught me that sitting at a table covered with a white tablecloth with a boy would remind him of having sex with me. I learned that wearing a string of pearls reflects cleavage, black patent leather shoes reflect up, so do puddles and I deserve to be raped! What price to pay for such a well rounded curriculum? But that’s ok, because my mother felt secure in the fact that I would never get pregnant in a school of this stature. I graduated in 1968. The school has been closed for about 25 years, I live 2000 miles away and I still meet people who remember the “best all girl school” with the reputation of the highest rate of premarital pregnancies. I guess those girls just didn’t apply themselves the way I did because I never got pregnant, and I learned I should always feel bad about myself if I want to go to heaven. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, let’s move on to my next assault.
As this healing painfully progressed, much akin to pectoral pain from the reps of the bench press, next I get steamrolled by the work of Dr. Marija Gimbutas,3 renowned archeologist who uncovered the revealing decoding evidence of peaceful woman-honoring, Goddess worshipping, and egalitarian civilizations that existed for thousands of years without war, during the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe. Before you know it I began to identify the same symbols in my mother’s home. All the different shapes and images of earth mothers and their designs were right in my face all this time giving me more clues, not to mention that my mother never heard of Gimbutas, But she knew. She always knew.
Perhaps the most potent for me was the concoction and mingling of Gimbutas’ symbols and the triangle or pubic V’s in Birnbaum’s Black Madonnas.4 The red ochre painted triangular markings in caves and figurines, symbols of the female reproduction system and I now have another rape in my life! The so called Holy Trinity for all intents and purposes was the revered symbol of my dark mother’s uterus, newly graffitied, ripped off, ravaged and devolved into the home of two guys and a ghost. However, this assault became the miracle inspired scene I performed from my work in progress, Ciao Giulia, when Antonio, Giulia’s rapist is getting a lecture from the lead character, Jackie, Giulia’s cousin, as she points a stiletto at his naked penis, while he’s strapped down on the altar of the oldest sanctuary in Sicily. She says, “No one invades the privacy of another human being without a personal invitation!” That line was also inspired by a line in Feminism in Italy when the women marched on the Vatican saying, “l’uter e mio e lo gestisco io.” “It is my uterus and I will manage it!5 Today I say to all the men and women of the cloth, (and I don’t give a hoot what level of divinity they achieved) “Keep your hands off my uterus! Keep your hand off my kids!”
Now with this fine catholic education I possess, I still have a few unanswered questions. Why don’t I have any kids or a real career? Why is it that 2007 years ago, the body of a woman delivered the body of Christ; today the body of Christ is not permitted to be consecrated from the hands of the body of a woman holding the same degree of divinity as a priest. Yet, the hands of the patriarch clergy enforcing that and other sexually discriminating laws within the church are raping our children! Not to mention, according to the LA Times in 1996, headline, “Butting Heads With The Pope,6 a meeting took place at the Chicago Archdiocese announcing “No sex in a new relationship after a divorce.” The dominant powers that be, made a decision appointing a “psycho” psycho therapist, man of the cloth and collar to analyze the brains of a couple to see if they are sexually mentally healthy before they allow them hit the sack. This mandatory service costs four to seven hundred ($400-$700) dollars. Isn’t that practice considered the oldest profession in the world? This is a guy who probably had just returned from backstage of the altar after having an undercover lover moment with someone’s child who thought that becoming an altar boy would get him to heaven faster. Talk about ring around the collar and where’s the Wisk when ya need it?
Now would someone please drop the ax between my ears to get me to understand the passive aggressive life I’m leading at this point, that desperately needs to be acknowledged, understood, and evacuated!? And why do I only remember celebrating the birth, death and comeback of Christ and don’t have the faintest idea of his mom’s birthday? Why doesn’t this woman have a birthday? Well actually I do know that she has a birthday, but have never been instructed to pay attention or to celebrate September 8. It’s sort of a math thing. If one picks up on the Immaculate Conception of December 8, and either subtract 3 months or add 9, it falls on September 8. Then again that date was one of those infallibility calls by Pope Pius IX in 1854.7
Yeah, and speaking of infallibility, August 25, 1997, Newsweek published “The Meaning of Mary; A Struggle Over Her Role Grows Within the Church.”8 The pope had been receiving an average of 100,000 signatures per month attached to a petition asking the pope to exercise the power of papal infallibility to proclaim a new dogma of the Roman Catholic faith: “that the Virgin Mary is “Co-Redemptrix, Medatrix of All Graces and Advocate for the People of God,”9 Instead of wasting time telling you how the powers that be thought it would be way too confusing to have the Holy Trinity turn into a quartet, Father John Roten, chairman of the International Marian Institute at the University of Dayton was a member of the commission that advised against a new papal definition and remains opposed, suggested, “the pope honor Mary with a new feast day or title, rather than go to the extreme and make it dogma. Why waste so much infallibility on something that is not of crucial importance?”10 I say, why can’t we tell Mr. Holy Ghost to either tell everyone that he is really a she, as in Sofia or hit the road, get a life and make room for Mary!
Now, that I know you’re paying attention, here’s another miracle coming at you. Armed with this knowledge, just last year our very sacred male of our AIHA organization, Dominic Candeloro asked me, “Cara mia, I would like you to come to Chicago next June to perform at the Printer’s Row Italian Book festival, but remember there will be priests there and you can’t use the F word. ” There he stood with the ax and whacked my brain right in half! I said, “No fucking way Dom. I would never use that word...especially in front of a priest! I only spell it now. F A I T H!
Yes, at that point there were many synchronicities. Much was information showing up on book shelves, video tapes, TV specials, magazine articles that began falling into my loving arms, researched by obsessive compulsive attachment behavioral personalities like myself, excavating and sharing their own deep truth trauma miracles.
Soon after, in August 1998 I went home to Chicago to attend a book signing of Fred Gardaphe, and to spend time with my birthday brother. I took a fall and shattered my left ankle, and casted a sprained right ankle, which drove my father’s move into the upstairs bedroom for two months, so my mother could bathe, feed and shove a bed pan under me in the middle of the night.
Although the healing of my right ankle kept me immobile, Judith Rae Grahn’s Blood, Bread and Roses:How Menstruation Created the World, took me to the very beginnings of darkness and light, bringing me down into the deepest crevices of the truest source of personal power. Learning that the painful menstrual periods I suffered thoughout my life, ultimately ceased by a hysterectomy, were ritualized, revered, and respected by combining its scientific, intellectual and emotional aspects as a gift to the human race. It’s funny, I was born with a vision disability called amblyopia, which in laymen’s terms, one is void of visual depth perception, however Ms. G emerged the third eye I always knew I had.
Connection? That broken ankle in Chicago, caused me to call a friend in the desert who had a key to my home to send me Grahn’s book that I left behind because I felt my short vacation visiting my family in Chicago was a “break” that I sorely needed away from my hermetic life of research and to give my one eye a vacation. Not to mention the ritual of menstrual women required their feet to be elevated and wore bamboo or fiber mats under their feet tied around their ankles with plants. This created the original Isis “Ankh” symbol, thus the invention of today’s ”t-strape” had to be learned by breaking my ankles, was scynchronicity to my ears.. MIRACLES, MIRACLES AND MORE!
Oh and I must mention my most recent awakening. I read my journal of that 1998 trip about hopping into the kitchen with my crutches to join my mother for lunch to watch the news.
“On September 2, Swiss Air Flight number 111 crashed and killed 229 people. This may be a stretch, but please do pay attention. The first thing that hit me was that I live on Highway 111. It was then that I learned to think in 3’s after learning about the truth of the symbolic triangle Then the newscaster noted that the Swiss Air plane was checked and in perfect condition on August 10 which was the day MY plane arrived in Chicago safe and sound. I pondered that thought, Am I a lucky girl or what? Then I asked mom, “Can you imagine losing someone in a plane crash?” After filing these thoughts back to the insignificant part of my brain, a couple of months later I returned to the desert, as I graduated to a portable cast and cane. I had been somewhat irritated with my opthamologist. I needed to discuss my pending surgery and he wasn’t returning my calls. For many years I searched for someone to help my vision problems and Dr. David Wilkins was one in a million with the expertise, courage and compassion to take on my case, commonly referred to as a “walking malpractice case,” when requesting an operation on a one eyed women. When he finally returned my call, my fear, stemming from my history of abandonments, silence and violence from the opposite sex, began to sizzle my Sicilian temper, prepping myself to rip into whatever excuse he had for ignoring me. Unfortunately, he immediately put out my fire with his tears as he shared the heart wrenching news that his youngest child, 19 year old Monte Wilkins was a passenger and a victim of the Swiss Air flight number 111! Monte Wilkins had been on his way to continue the Wilkins’ family ritual of studying in France as did his three older siblings. He also told me that his daughter learned that she was pregnant that very same day of her brother’s death, and named her child after Monte!”I just recently learned Dr. Wilkins has retired and has entered the teaching circuit. He sent his book to me, which just happened to arrived on Monte’s birthday, March 13, entitled United in Tragedy. Dr. Wilkins has always been a staunch Seventh Day Adventist keeping his cards close to his chest. However, this tragic assault of the loss of his son catapulted him in organizing a group he labeled, “A Reluctant Fraternity.”11 The function of this community of relatives of the victims of Swiss Air Flight 111, from all over the world and from all belief systems, was to assist in group healing! It is a must read, a blessing and a revelation to real evidence of sychronicity, compassion, death/rebirth and the interconnectedness in all living things!
In 1999, I attended the end of the millennium AIHA conference. A timely assault/awakening the environmental aspect when Marguerite Rigoglioso, ecofeminist’s presented “The Rape of the Lake Story.”12 Was it really a coincidence she began with a current real life story of the location of my opening scene in my book in progress, Ciao Giulia? It opens with the story of Demetra and Proserpina at a location formally considered one of the most sacred places in the center of Sicily. Lago di Pergusa, known for it’s enchanted waters and wild life? Not any more. According to Marguerite, due to an auto racetrack constructed around the lake by the mafia in the sixties, she and others concerned about it’s deteriorating are trying to save it. There is a curious biological phenomenon that occurs. The lake “periodically turns a deep red.13 It makes it’s own desperate attempt to save itself, however the people who live there, reared on the story of the rape of Proserpina/Persephone, believe it’s the blood of a woman from long ago. Needless to say, she had MY attention! She has been one of the leaders instrumental in working with World Wildlife organizations to raise funds here in America in Saving of the Lake Pergusa. Today, the Salton Sea here in the desert, California’s largest lake is also dying. Lying between the heat blasted mountains of the Colorado Desert and two polluted rivers, drainage from 500,000 acres of irrigated farmland are it’s primary sources of water and have turned the sea into a shallow brew of contaminates.
My obsessions to know now evolved and escalated to expose. I needed to expose not only the truth of my Sicilian American Catholic labels, but to consciously remove all my labels and become a simple human being who tells the truth! It has also become clear that more of a female perspective is sorely needed to save this planet. Speaking of the female perspective, allow me to share a spine tingling contemporary goddess experience from my personal journal of notes about the end of the millennium AIHA conference in San Francisco. That evening in my hotel room, in my pj’s, I penned Italian Americans: A Retrospective on the 20th Century,
November 11, 1999
“What a way to begin a conference! Fred Gardaphe, President quits! During the opening address I had to go to the John. After two minutes, women came piling in talking about Fred resigning. Some issue concerning bylaw stuff going on. I’m frightened as all hell. Fred is my brother from the hood and got me involved with this organization. Somehow I drift into a room full of people not realizing I didn’t belong there. It was an emergency membership meeting duke-ing it out about the issue of changing the name to Italian American Studies Association. The gist of the problem seems to be that the older guys.....excuse me I really should refer to them as “the originators,” of the organization have a great distaste for the idea of changing the name from American Italian Historical Assn. to Italian American Studies Assn. From what I gather the new name lends itself to allowing the membership to expand into all the possibilities of being IA.....Like for instance we have the first gay and lesbian panel this year and I guess it wasn’t an easy task to organize. So......the old and the new continued to sling arrows at each other. The originators kept saying, ‘Fred, we don’t want you to leave, but’......there was always “but” until a woman stepped in. A MOST impressive one at that! Jeanette Vuocolo, Greek goddess type, just what this group needed. She says.......’Do you notice that it’s all the men that are fighting?” Silence. I froze.......Didn’t breathe!....Then she says, ‘You know this is no different than in my own house. I buried my 85 year old father recently, without him and my own brothers ever speaking! And now they never will speak! Is that what you all want?’ She looks at the originators, ‘You guys started this group. Thank god for you! We wouldn’t BE here if it wasn’t for you! But things are changing and we have to change with it. There is MORE to this group than Ellis Island, WW2, etc. You guys want to control and identify what Italian Americana is! The organization needs to breath! And there must be some sort of compromise here!‘ The hair on my arms stood attentive....for it was a moment I will never forget in contemporary goddess peacemaking. Bravo Jeanette! She did it!”
My next slap in the face arrived during my study tour throughout Sicily in 2000 when meeting face to face with the women I had not been allowed to know. The darkness of Santa Rosalia. She is depicted in both black and white images. I wondered? Her story I learned at an AIHA conference in 1999 panel led by Mary Louise Lucido, professor at Monterey Peninsula College devoted her time to Patroness of Palermo: Santa Rosalia, A History of the Monterey Fishermen’s Festival.14 Santa Rosalia’s history is that she was a Norman who left a life of wealth behind in 1100 to live as a hermit and meditate in a cave in Mount Pellegrino and died receiving holy communion. Her fame? Supposedly the people of Palermo suffered a plague in 1625. They dug up her bones, carried them through Palermo, and thus ended the plague. My ritual studies in Sicily assisted my understanding of today’s huge carnivals or Italian feasts that are held in Europe and in Italian American neighborhoods that carry the statue of The Madonna, are venerated versions of the Demetra/Proserpina story. However, the patriarchal Catholic society changed genders, having men carrying the madonna as a woman searching for her son, and attributes her greatness as being the mother of Jesus Christ. How about Santa Lucia? This gal cured the blind, and for refusing to have sex with a Roman soldier they plucked out her eyes! St.Agata, she refused to marry the King of Sicily and they cut off her breasts. So they say. The Church, for some reason cannot keep their hands off our sexy bodies! Their stories most always eliminate body parts. The popular belief is that both were women who were known as nurturers. Lucia and Agata were venerated from Isis and Astarte.15 Today, women celebrate by making pastries in the shape of breasts in honor of Agata and couscous for Lucia as wheat goddess December 13th.16 The healing witches were tortured by medieval medical profession until they gave out their potions. “Some say the church murdered as many as 9 million people mostly women in 300 hundred years.”17 How intimidating this passionate nonviolent group of peacemaker/healers must have been! How determined and willing to accept the violent consequences for the preservation of the quality of life! How offended I became with the existence and origin of the sacrament of Baptism representing the evil of the world had fallen on the shoulders of women! Everyday there are millions of couples paying the church millions of dollars to take away the sins from their innocent newborns that the female culture/earth mothers/protectresses of ALL the elements have been blamed for by a few guys who knew how to write good copy, oops I mean THE BIBLE. But if you pay attention to high tech, one can find hope right in one’s own living room.
In 2004, CNN’s production of “The Two Marys” and ABC’s December 2005 airing of “The Mystery of Pope Joan” assists us in exposing scholarship on these submerged beliefs having to do with the truth about our sister folk that the dominant powers consistently discard in the landfills of legends and never in a herstory book!
Concerning Mary Magdalene, Sister Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, Fordham University said, “She was neither a whore or a wife, but a witness. Someone who preached to the apostles. Someone who was a women and a leader in the community.”18 Professor Amy Jill Levine said, “Jesus was supported by women. They paid his bills, Mary Magdalene supported him with her friendship and fidelity.”19
Donna Cross, author researched and gathered 500 accounts of the existence of Pope Joan (John Anglicus). She and other scholars explained that in 800 AD, many women thirsting for knowledge resorted to mens apparel in order to get an education. Easy to cover up, cause they wore long robes and hygiene wasn’t big in those days. No showers or saunas, if ya get my drift.20 Not to mention that the Vatican has a Pope chair in it’s museum they would not allow Diane Sawyer to view beyond a photograph. This purple marble Pope throne has a hole in the middle very similar to a toilet but in the shape of a key hole so that on “crown” the pope day, one of the cardinals would reach “down and under,” examining his new “Holy Father’s” family jewels in order to prevent any future embarrassment originally created by Pope Joan. Her last day as Pope, she was strolling in a ceremonial procession on the street now named Via Papae Femineae (Female Pope Street). In Lawrence Durrell’s novel, she lets out a scream, and drops to the ground where a baby’s head emerged between her legs. At first the crowd was in awe that a miracle had occurred. A man having a baby, until they realized he was a she. The miracle then became the work of the devil.
Summing it up for me on these new excavations of sex, lies and video tapes of the Church, Professor Marvin Meyer from Chapman University said concerning the Church hierarchy controlling the truth of Mary, and I will take the liberty and say all the Marys, “One cannot alienate half of the human race and get away with it!”21
Last and certainly not least, there is now genetic proof that this ancient group of peacekeeping rulers in our lost matriarch system, were women of color. 22 As a Sicilian American Woman, or sometimes rudely referred to as a “nigger turned inside out,” this is a most interesting thought considering the fact that today women...all women have the least amount of power. Now at this point I had more anger in my little finger than in all of the nuclear missile plants in the world. I was little pissed at the time in my 40s and I’m now finding out that I had been lied to about my past. I felt I should get my money back and wanted to take a gun into the middle of the street and resort to open fire. But then the male powers that be, would say “Aren’t you over reacting?”
But I got over that too. From the creative works and meeting the talent and brilliance of Louisa Callio, Susan Caperna Lloyd, filtering their truths of our dark mother, to the brilliant thesis by “Queen of the Spreadsheet’s,” a nickname I’ve given to Mary Beth Moser, author of Honoring Darkness, assisted me in sublimating this anger.23 The spreadsheet of the black madonnas put them in order for me. The discovery of the Madonna Adonai, the oldest Marian sanctuary in Sicily, in a small village near the foot of Mt.Etna, summed up the fragmented knowledge of the Madonna into three words: Hebrew, Christian and African. The proof of the interconnectedness of us all. It was She who separated me for four years from my new student sister, Mary Beth, of the Sicily Millennium study tour and it was She who brought us together after four years to learn that Madonna Adonai is the cover of Mary’s thesis and the star of my book/screenplay, Ciao Giulia!
This interconnectedness has also assaulted the mind of our great Dalai Lama in his latest effort entitled The Universe In A Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. In 1987 neuroscientist Francisco Varela from Paris, American Businessman, Adam Engle and Dalai Lama formed the first Mind and Life conference in Dharamsala, the home of Dalai Lama, bringing together a group of scientist from various disciplines who were sympathetic to the spirit of dialogue.
For example he says, “The assumption sometimes made that, as society progresses, science will continually reveal the falsehoods of our beliefs particularly religious beliefs so that an enlightened secular society can eventually emerge. This is a view shared by Marxists dialectical materialists, as I discovered in my dealings with the leaders of Communist China in the 1950’s and in the course of my studies of Marxist thought in Tibet. In this view, science is perceived as having disproved many of the claims of religion, such as the existence of God, grace and the eternal soul. And with this conceptual framework, anything that is not proven or affirmed by science is somehow either false or insignificant. Such views are effectively philosophical assumptions that reflect their holders’ metaphysical prejudices. Just as we must avoid dogmatism in science, we must ensure that spirituality is free from limitations.24
Connecting this with the Sardinian geneticist, Cavalli-Sforza that the mitochrondial energy in the DNA we inherit from our mothers, the double helix which Cavalli-Sforza calls “the symbol of the evolution of the universe...the unlimited possibilities of becoming.”25 I believe. this is a long memory that continues to pass through traditions. However, traditions are not counted as herstory, allowing the ownership of the moniker of infallibility to belong the Pope and others like him...........PFFFT!
Today I have finally got my brain in order. That is the duties of the right brain/left brain So much so that I have opened my compassion, forgiveness and understanding of my pain stemming from relationships with the men in my life, but have found myself being instrumental in the awakening of their awareness of their right brain supressions of love, compassion, creativity, justice and equality they have not been allowed to know or have been shamed into forgetting. Oh and about shame. Do you ever feel bad about yourself and you don’t know why? According to John Bradshaw, there are two kinds of shame: Healthy and Toxic. “In itself healthy shame is necessary to have the feeling of shame if one is to be truly human. Shame tells us of our limits.” However, he says, “Shame as a healthy human emotion can be transformed into shame as a state of being. As a state of being, shame takes over one’s whole identity. To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.”26
Now that is the scholarly perspective of two shame types. Allow me to jump back to the 1997 AIHA conference entitled Shades of Black and White Conflict and Collaboration between Two Communities. For here lies the cure for shame. According to my journal, “So here I am at my very first conference that I arrived on a scholarship from the Cleveland Italian American Cultural Foundation, proud as a peacock, to be asked to present a paper on Birnbaum’s panel; however, I’m nervous, surrounded by scholars and not used to being in front of people without a song and dance. After my presentation, we began the question and answer period. One of the members asked me a question about how to stop feeling shameful toward her body. Before I could demonstrate the classic ‘flip the bird’ hand gesture to those dark feelings, one of our panelist’s, Clarebeth Lo Prinzi-Kassel, a Texas Sicilian midwife, jumped up and said in a most engaging Texas drawl, “Do what my Sicilian grandmother does. She rips off her blouse, runs outside and sticks her tits in the ground! Damn straight, ya gotta putcha tits in the ground!” We paid attention. They had to scrape me off the floor.
So what’s next? How can we all assist in the healing? Let’s face it. Not everyone’s is going to buy into “breastioli” bonding with Mother Earth. My personal little stories of my experiences compose just a microcosm of the big picture. Here are some of my concerns: War is everywhere on our planet. The big powers are obvious, and the little powers? How often do we hear stories of mommy or daddy walking into their home and murder the entire family and themselves after having a bad day? The latest epidemic of teenage female violence.27 The old adage, boys will be boys has changed to girls will be boys. In Fred Gardaphe’s latest book, From Wise Guys To Wise Men, he says that,
“It is a man's physical strength that enables him to have dominance over wom and as long as the world is organized around physical power, men will always have that advantage.” He goes on to say, “ Usually when people speak of power, they refer to qualities such as intuition, emotion and empathy--all facets of psychological power, a power that is exercised through the act of listening, of absorbing information in a situation, and then formulating responses based on analysis of that information.”28
Unfortunately, I don’t think the mother who hosted a birthday party in Baltimore for her 13 year old daughter, used the “psychological power” Gardaphe speaks of. The old children’s rhyme our mothers taught us that “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me,” did not hold true on April 24, 2006, when she instigated the beating of a twelve year old guest, Nicole Townes into a coma. She was beaten because a boy at the party, who was supposed to be the boyfriend of the birthday girl, kissed her on the cheek because of a dare from another boy. The birthday girl’s mommy was so disrespected by that little kiss, she ordered her child to, “handle your business!” Then the birthday girl, 13; her mother; 36, her 19-year-old sister; and three other girls, ages 13, 14, 15 and a 24 year old beat her nearly to death.29
On September 16, 2006, an 18 year old mother who had been out partying, returned to the east Harlem shelter where she left her 3 month old baby girl, Niah Ford. She vomited in a bucket half filled with cleaning solution next to her bed. The next morning she found little Niah face down at the bottom of the bucket.30 After that read, all I could do was to sit myself down on my sofa, grabbed my black madonna made from the obsidian of Mt. Etna, where Demeter searched for her missing daughter, Proserpina, lit a candle and forced myself to fully comprehend the implications of Niah Fords death. I continue to do it daily. Gee, I wonder if this tragedy falls into the catagory for sainthood by the Divine Authority of our Pope. Does he even know her name?
Last and certainly not least, I have come to the conclusion our female submerged oralities, belief systems and herstories are emerging as a major polarity.The polarity became most evident to me one day at 5:30 in the morning. I was at the peak of my menapausal experience, exfoliating my most prolific discovery. I had formally been complaining that I have been unable to eat certain foods that really weren’t good for me anyway like Chicago style hotdogs when the Chicago White Sox won the World Series. Talk about shame? Not to mention my party days of shots of to kill ya tequila also came to a screeching halt. I was once again assaulted with another miracle! I know now that the beauty of menopause tells me what I will and will not tolerate! That morning every sensory perception secreted from the core of my being when I opened up the front page of my newspaper on August 7, 2004, to a picture of one of my sister folk, Lynndi England, an American soldier abusing another human being holding a leash around his neck! Of all the images of women from our dark mother, black madonnas, comare, grandmothers, this was the ultimate representation of right brain suppression! The key to unlocking concepts of justice with compassion, equality and transformation. A polarity leading us to the epitome of the brutalization of the human race!
However, I will try to forgive her as I have strived to forgive the intruder and thief of my innocence and trust! And, if I’m to use my life’s journey of not so many accidental deaths as the metaphormic remedy for brutalization of the human race, then I must share how I have processed my assaults. Futhermore, I believe in the possibilities of this remedy to transform the present state of the planet from a social, economic and environmental perspective. As human beings in need of nurturance, we usually will go to a mother or mother figure for replenishment as we all need to crawl back into the womb. This of course could be through family, a friend, a therapist or even a priest, who provides the portal. For we have been there and know of no greater well of renewal and restoration. However, there are those who have been shamed, or deeply deprived of love and self love, so much so that when they come in contact with someone they recognize as their well of healing, they unlawfully claim ownership and literally crawl into the womb without any regard to the damage they cause. On a personal level, I have chosen this methodology of healing; however, desperate it may sound, regardless of how many angry victims, relatives of victims, therapists, et al may dispute my route of healing, I have been alone in this! The discovery of the goddess in me enlightened IN me that I will separate but not discard the protectress in me. This assault transformed into an awakening leading to my miracle. This miracle being that a poor soul chose me because he thought that I had the MOST love, which makes me worth something and assists me in reclaiming my innocence. Most of all, this miracle began the forgiveness of myself for thinking it was my fault. Therefore, I have chosen to put myself in the catagory of loved rather than shamed. An assault and all assaults can lead to awakenings and transform to miracles. These awakenings guide us back to the understanding of the original Holy Trinity before IT’S assault. The understanding of those ancient pubic V symbols written in red ochre, can return us back to a future of justice with compassion, equality and transformationm, ultimately, to our lost Matriarch.
In conclusion to this work, some may say that this Italian American performance artist, s.w.o.p, (scholar without papers) has an elevator that has popped a hole through the roof. That may be. However the real questions are, Who is responsible? What is the cause? Where and when does it affect one’s path in life? When does it begin? How can it end? How will it end? Why am I writing this? For I am not here to start a new religion. However I am here to tell the truth, hoping it may jog others’ truth memories as well. Believe it or not we’re all in this together. And as Professor Marvin Meyer from Chapman University said in “The Two Marys,” “You cannot allienate half of the human race and get away with it!” 30 And I am here to say to all my brother and sisterfolk. Right brain - Don’t leave home without it. Be who you are. PAY ATTENTION! And Pa-leeez!!!
Find Your Mother, The Mother In You....And The Rest Will Follow.
BALANCE!
THE GODDESS INVITES YOU TO PERUSE HER BIBLIOGRAPY AND ENJOY THE “TEARS OF THE GODDESS” BREASTIOLI PALM TREE BARK WALL APPAREL YOU CAN WEAR
Bradshaw, John.Healing The Shame that Binds U(Health Communications, Inc., Dearfield Beach, Fla, 1988).
Calio, Louise. In the Eye of Balance, (Manhasset Hills, Paradiso Press, 1978).
Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca, History and Geography of Human Genes, (Princeton University Press, Princton, NJ 1994)
Gardaphe, Fred, From Wise Guys to Wise Men (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,York, London 2006)
Gimbutas, Marija, The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, (Harper, San Francisco,CA 1991).
Gimbutas, Marija, The Language of the Goddess, (Harper & Row, 1989)
Grahn, Judith Rae. Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1993).
Lama, Dalai. The Universe in a Single Atom, (Morgan Road Books, New York, 2005).
Lloyd, Susan Caperna. No Pictures For My Grave, (Mercury House, San Francisco, 1992).
Redfield, James, Adrienne, Carol, Celestine Prophecy, (Warner Books, Inc, New York, 1993)
Reed, Donna and Starhawk. Signs Out of Time, (Belili Productions, 2003)
Wilkins, Dr, David and Cecil Murphy. United By Tragedy, (Pacific PressPublishing Assn., Nampa, ID, 2003).
Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca, History and Geography of Human Genes, (Princeton University Press, Princton, NJ 1994)
Notes
1.Susan Caperna Lloyd, No Pictures For My Grave, (Mercury House, San Francisco, 1992).see cover.
2. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, She Is Everywhere, Chickie Farella, “The Speech I Never Spoke” (iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, NE.) pg. 169.
3. Donn Reed and Starhawk,”Signs Out of Times”, the story of Marija Gimbutas, (Belili Productions, 2003 VHS).
4. Lucia Birnbaum, Black Madonnas (Northeastern University Press, Boston,1993). pp 7,88.
5. Lucia Chiavola.Birnbaum, liberazione della donna, feminism in Italy, (Weslyan Press.Middletown, Cn. 1986) p82
6. Mary Rourke, “Butting Heads With the Pope” Los Angeles Times 1996
7. Kenneth L. Woodward, “Hail Mary” Newsweek “The Meaning of Mary: Struggle Over Role Grows Within The Church”(August 25, 1997)pp48-55.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10.Ibid.
11. Dr. David Wilkins, Cecil Murphy, United By Tragedy, (Pacific Pre Publishing Assn., Nampa, ID, 2003).page 49.
12. Margarite Rigoglioso, “Rape of the Lake,” Pandora Spring 1999
13. Ibid. page 32
14. AIHA 1999 conference session I attended.
15. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother, african origins and godmothers, (iUniverse Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 2001).pp 165 -176.
16. Ibid. page 169.
17. Donna Reed, Basmajian, “Women and Spirituality” 3 tapes Film(ProductioStudio D, National Film Board of Canada and Great Atlantis and Pacific Film companies, 1993)
18. CNN’s production of “The Two Marys” 2004
19. Ibid.
20. ABC, “The Mystery of Pope Joan”, aired December 29, 2005
21. see note 18.
22. see note 15, see genetic map page xlvii, also see page 3
23. Mary Beth Moser, Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black Madonnas in Italy,(Dea Madre Publishing, 2005) pp72-74
24. Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, (Morgan Road Books, New York,2005).page 38.
25. see note 15. page xxxvii, conversation with Luca Cavalli-Sforza
26. John Bradshaw. Healing The Shame that Binds Us, (Health Communications,Inc., Dearfield Beach, Fla, 1988).see Preface.
27. Wiley Hall, “Violence Among Girls Is Increasing Across America,” Assocated Press, (Internet article.4/26/04, Baltimore)
28. Fred Gardaphe, From Wise Guys to Wise Men, The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities, (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York, London 2006). P109-110
29. Associated Press, “Harlem Baby Dies After Falling in Vomit”, ABC News, Internet September 22, 2006
30. see nite 18.
