Thoughts on Fifty-Seven Women

Some thoughts have been nagging me: Thoughts on the 57 women who have come forth about improprieties at the hands of comedian Bill Cosby.

I wish to borrow from the wisdom of Psychologist, Social Activist & Author of the healing 16 Steps for Empowerment, Women Sex and Addiction, Many Roads, One Journey, and If the Buddha Got Stuck, Charlotte Kasl, PhD. Her work is pivotal in the world of addiction. Without it, we miss the essential background for these times and decades past.

When we began hearing one by one from women who were standing for their truth regarding incidences of impropriety, groping, drugging, sexual assault and rape, against Bill Cosby--I often heard a certain refrain.

The refrain frequently was--: Why didn't she come forth sooner?

Here is the backdrop. Let's say you were violated by a socially establish, prominent figure on the world scene. Let's also add the person was male.

Here is the harsh truth for many of the women who have reported being violated by Bill Cosby.

Following (the alleged event) you are aware, as you put your reality together, that things are not as they should be. You lost consciousness. Your clothing is apart from your body, (apart also the dreams you held in your heart).

As spokeswomen have said: what do you want? You are horrified as you put the inconceivable together. You want OUT of there. You want to leave. And you are afraid to speak for you feel responsible for what has just happened to you. You feel immense shame. You may say--nothing.

In the Sixteen Steps for Discovery & Recovery which Kasl put together, her fourth step is:

     "We examine our beliefs, addictions and dependent behavior in the context of living in a         hierarchical, patriarchal culture."

EVERY entity, every institution, you need to seek is male dominated from police to healthcare.

I have heard many a glib or dismissal tone about the women who did not report the sexual assault.

Obviously, the women doubted they would be believed. 

Even now, we know there was a backlog of over 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide. While the number has been reduced, there still are untested rape kits sitting on shelves. Some of these go back 20+ years. This is today. This is a women's reality. 

Sexual assault is on the rise. To me it is essential to stand with these women, who overall have had 
nothing to gain by speaking out. The statute of limitations had run out for nearly all of the assaults. 

The Huffington Post has written that Cosby had a segment on a record called "Spanish Fly" from "It's True, It's True." Here he talks of putting drugs into women's drinks. It is beyond chilling to read. 

Cosby himself must have felt impenetrable, as he appeared on Larry King and happily chatted about
drugs added to drinks: as in the "Spanish Fly." In the mood of the words on his recording: Cosby's narration is full of joy, giddy even. It's like he had a powerful secret.

That is how safe Cosby felt. This is how unsafe the women who have come forward were.

An Exquisite Night

It's a wonderful night. Snow began falling imperceptibly hours ago. I thought it was over, but the mounds of white blanketing the hoods of cars grew and grew.

My iPhone played a 2006 concert of Pink Martini in Portland. As it neared the end: the brass and percussion played out their crescendo. Intoxicating. You felt as if you were--nearly there.

I've my son to thank for this Dec 28 reverie: he has gifted two, rocking tickets to hear Pink Martini live, in concert at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, April 29, 2016. I may live in bliss until then and thereafter.

Unexpectedly, I put Donald Trump on mute and had the "peace which passeth understanding," in the words of T.S. Eliot.

Then as if to register these very words in print: I heard strains of Sammy Davis Jr.'s  "What kind of Fool Am I?" playing in my head for not having done this sooner. The only answer I can think of is I've been too Catholic to think of it. Perhaps recovery is in play!

Yet in the midst of buying groceries based on a 6-10" snow forecast, once home I looked up:

Why, Why, had the world lost the remarkable Angeles Arrien last year at only 73 years of age? Yet even learning she died suddenly from walking pneumonia, doesn't blunt my inner sadness at losing a woman I so admire!

Angeles Arrien was an anthropologist, author, educator and magical weaver of bridges tying psychology, comparative religions, cultural anthropology and indigenous wisdoms together.

I hope she will forgive me for quoting a poem in her brilliant The Four-Fold Way -  Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary.

It carries my heart's cry over her loss, yet my awe of all the books of hers I possess.
In yes, this exquisite night, I love you, Angeles Arrien.

each of us carries
in our chest
a song
so old
we don't know
if we learned it

some night
between the murmurs
of fallen kisses

our lips
surprise us
when we utter

this song
that is singing
and crying at once

 ---Francisco X Alarcon, Body in Flames

For You and Your Family: Cradling Christmas

A Tree Upside Down

Cradle yourself this Christmas

More than any other time in your life;

Soften your days with lit candles and love;

Let embraces come from where they will; 

Allow the tears to flow--for how can they not?

Hang on to every Cherished Good;

Do you know, can you even begin to imagine

Or possibly remember, the million moments

Love was exchanged by the gifts

Of your hands, heart and soul?

All the love you gave! The Love

Received! Let the myriad moments

Cradle this Christmas;

And as the months

And years go by

More, more

Will be 

Revealed--

The

Million 

Moments

Shining

Like

The

Stars.

Written Dec. 5, 1998

By Connie Nelson Ahlberg - All Rights Reserved

Taking Christmas As It Comes

Taking Christmas As It Comes


You have to take your Christmas as it comes--
Even if you've had losses.
In letting go you can embrace:
Your friends, Your angels;
Your family, Your tree,

For the New Year comes
in time for healing:
and wisdom the gifts of hard times.


©1995 Connie Nelson Ahlberg

And May All the Heavens Bless

Freedom From Want

Norman Rockwell

If you don't have a turkey too often,
It's pretty nice on that Thursday
late in November

To bow your head
While Mom rests her legs,
And thank for the little things,
Like the carving knife,
And the big things,
Like each other.

©Connie Nelson Ahlberg 1996

Pray, Who Is Missing?

A Nun Ironing Cardinals Vestments

Vatican 1967 - Eve Arnold 

Magnum Photos @Pinterest

The roll of men in the Catholic Church is so broad, so inclusive of them, of patriarchy, that it seems those in power are unable to see the half of us that are missing. 

I'll never forget Pope John Paul II's funeral. By the time all the Cardinals paraded out, esteemed priests, deacons, and altar men or boys, the view was so overwhelmingly male (draped in red and white) that it was stunning. The scene was a sea of red matching the slippers the departed Pope wore on his feet.

I took notes on the first Mass said while the Pope was in the United States. We had a female soloist, one woman reading a responsorial psalm, a choir with women--but not on the altar. 

Even the beloved Virgin Mary was off to the side. The image of the nun above is such a striking pose which depicted the times--but for women, the crux has not changed. Maureen Down is right. The Church protects the old guard. 

In 1969 MS Magazine had it's first preview issue. That was 46 years ago. 

This is the unanswered issue of our times. Essentially women are still ironing vestments in the basement of the Vatican. Even now the Catholic Church nearest to me, Mary Mother of the Church (coined Mary Mother of the Mortgage by a nun ) decided, no, little girls could NOT serve at the Mass: a fact which saddened even traditional women in the parish.

I have listened to MSNBC'S Chris Matthews say that here in the States and elsewhere, it is women who are aware of the school setting, who is teaching, what the needs of the children are, along with the needs/& care of the home. Some of these same women, of course, have their own careers. 

Years ago I said the Church will turn to women when they run out of men. I was wrong. Even in listening to comments the night before the Pope departed, I heard very closed minds about women in the Church--one of them being a bishop. The resistance regarding women as equals seems so monumentally foreign to the patriarchy that they can't even engage about it. So it's double-speak. They can't connect in meaningful ways.

We are told all the roles women are playing in the Church today. But the laity isn't seeing it. It seems we can be close to missionaries to Guatemala or Haiti, but heaven help us, we cannot be a deacon or say Mass. Years ago at St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis, a deacon introduced his wife, who was allowed to become a deacon only because he was.

He said, "You will hear how profoundly more eloquent and able she is than I."

She was given a standing ovation.

I am now grasping once again, why my former teacher and mentor in grades 6-8th grades, so Italian her father and uncle were from Italy--has left the Church.

When John Paul II said he didn't want "cafeteria Catholics," it angered my brilliant friend. She left the Church and is now a Episcopal Eucharist minister. She has even stood in white robes near stairs to the subway train and administered ashes on Ash Wednesday. It's an insult to offer a women with a Ph.D. anything but equality.

She hopes she will see inclusion and family planning in her lifetime in the Catholic Church. Now I'm pondering if I'll see it.

And it isn't as if celibacy, hierarchy, patriarchy and secrecy have been a resounding success.

I'm always praying that someone opens the windows! Airs the place out! Is magnanimous to all: Welcome everyone! There are women giants who have the calling, the brilliance and grace to serve the Church in outstanding ways.

I am pulling for Pope Francis, but I am painfully aware--he is but two years short of 80 years of age.

A Franciscan Laity group I saw pictured in Rome within the last two years--were predominantly gray, or capped with white hair.  Young, educated, Hispanic women aren't attending the Church of their mothers.

Recently a dear friend who has served her Church for decades in major ways asked herself: What has the Church done for me?

Pope of Mercy

Pope Francis at Youth Day 

at Haimi Castle in Korea 2014 /

Closing Mass for Asian youth

Pope Francis is a comforter, a teacher, a Model of Mercy. This is what he wants for us in our own interaction with the world. 

It has been impossible for me to watch several days of Pope Francis' trip to the United States with a dry eye. Indeed, I have wept twice.

Though I have issues with the Church of my youth--who, who cannot be taken with the compassion of this man? 

As we've witnessed Pope Francis weave through his incredible days here---there the little ones are, at rest and waiting, with their devoted parents, those with special and debilitating diseases and handicaps in the hopes Francis might, just might stop and touch their heads and hearts. 

All the youth the Pope has touched are actually not victims though the Church has the term "victim saints," and they may well be on that road of grace. 

Here is the truth that turns everything on its head.

What I would lift the parents with is the knowledge that:

We choose our parents and siblings and thus time and place on the soul level before we arrive here.

Therefore, these beyond challenged children the Pope has blessed and kissed are on a holy mission. They have accepted, they have chosen--a limited body for all the lessons they will experience within it. 

One can certainly grasp that our spiritual evolution or theirs would be sped by such a life of sacrifice. 

The Pope keeps highlighting those of us without, those of us "on the margins," forgotten, hungry and in need of outstretched arms. As a simple yet complex man of grace, Francis models how to live Christ in the world. 

We can ignite our own lives by observing, by seeing, his flame: visiting the incarcerated, seeing the elderly, reaching to console the homeless, and honoring peace and foregiveness within our own families.

At first I cried when Francis entered St. Patrick's in New York City. Just one of my thoughts was: He may never come again. We simply don't know. So every moment is precious and never to be repeated. 

A goal I have is to read through all St. Francis' speeches at each venue. I want to wrap myself in his illuminated words. This Pope is a gift for our times. The Catholic Church has been in such a spiritual black hole. And then up pops Francis, having his own darker days when he was forced into seclusion by his own Jesuits.

Yet everything he has endured on his path to the Papacy, though he never sought it, has become who he is today.

I have prayed to my "Heavy Hitter" Saints to protect Pope Francis and allow him to Be With Us...modeling mercy, transforming souls.