Two Wolves

This is an old, old story - older than some of the hills. I’m sure you’ve heard it before somewhere, maybe in another form with different characters or told with different words. I’ve heard many versions, myself. It’s as true today as it was yesterday, and as it will be tomorrow. Because it’s true, and because some people I know need to hear it, I’ll tell it again. I hope you like it enough to share it where it needs to be heard, as well.

***

Once there was a young boy who sought out his grandfather. Tears were running down his face as he plopped himself down in the dirt at the older man’s feet. The grandfather set aside his work and asked the boy what was wrong.

“Oh Grandfather,” wailed the boy, “I hurt so much! I feel like there is an angry wolf inside me trying to tear me to pieces!”

The older man nodded. He’d seen this before.. “That’s because there is,” he told his grandson. And when the boy looked startled, he gathered him into his arms. “Actually, there are two wolves inside each of us.”

The boy wiped tears from his eyes. “Two wolves? How can we live with two wolves inside us? Won’t they just rip us to shreds?”

The grandfather shook his head. “Those two wolves always battle each other first, grandson. Only when they’re done do they turn to us. One wolf is the wolf you feel now - the wolf of anger, hatred, sorrow, despair and worry. It will happily eat you up from the inside. But there is another wolf, too - the wolf of love, happiness, compassion, peace and gratitude. It would rather lick you than eat you.” He licked his grandson’s cheek to show him just what he meant.

The boy giggled, just as the older man knew he would. “I want that wolf to win! How can I help the good wolf win, Grandfather?”

The grandfather put the boy on his feet again and looked him in the eye. “The strongest wolf will always win. You choose which wolf grows best within you by what you feed them most, with your words, your actions, and your thoughts.” With that, the grandfather picked up his work again and sent the boy off to think about his wolves.

***

Hating is easy. Blaming someone else for our sorrow and pain is easy, too. But what we feel in the end comes down to exactly which of those wolves inside us we choose to feed.

I offer up this tale with gratitude that I have learned it, compassion for those who need to hear it, and love for all who listen. Thank you! And thank you too, for spreading this tale around more!

dwolf34, 11/20/2013

"It's Easier Being a Tomboy...."

There’s a conversation I had with a tall, lanky woman in a sex positive coffee shop over a copy of “The Joy of Sex” that’s been hanging around in my mind for a very long time. I’m not sure if she was trying to shock me with her admission that she was trans or just owning up to the fact that she was very awkwardly female in her heels and skirt. But when she opined that the female form was beautiful and she always wished she’d had breasts, I told her I’d gladly give her mine if I could because I’ve never wanted them. The conversation led on to how much easier it was for me to be a tomboy than it was for her to be a sissy, which I conceded at the time. But there she was, in a skirt and heels and claiming her pronoun, and there I was in jeans and hiking boots, still the tomboy after all these years.

In our culture where we don’t have a comfortable box for the kid who really isn’t cis-male or cis-female, it is hard being different, and it really doesn’t matter what that different identity is. The bulk of the population sees themselves as male or female, and everyone else has to be one or the other, either like them or not, easily identifiable by outward markers of gender. I, by not embracing the gender that my body very obviously wears by decking it in the socially acceptable fashion of dresses and facial makeup, am obviously confused, and perhaps in need of professional help.

I actually spent a long time talking honestly to a therapist. And did that professional “cure” me and turn me into a sugar and spice and everything nice girly girl to match my outward and inward primary sexual characteristics? No. She very helpfully encouraged me to be who I am, and to develop strategies for dealing with the rest of the human beings that I share the planet with. She brought up the valid point that no matter what, I can’t change everyone else or what they do, I can only change myself and my reactions to them.

My choice of reaction is to let the world see me as the gender my mother goddess curves suggest to them. I circle the “F” on forms and my driver’s license reports that I am female. What my body genetically is is pretty undeniable, after all. What my gender is inside my own head is less specific, more fluid, never comfortable with either extreme. But I don’t let that worry me. The outside world can see me as a woman who dresses ambiguously and that’s fine with me.

It’s fine because only rarely do I feel called to make someone else uncomfortable, and trying to explain my gender identity tends to do that. If someone is curious, I’ll try to explain so that they can understand, just like I do when someone asks about my not so easily defined religion. Or what I write. Or my identity as a BDSM switch. Or that what I’m sexually attracted to has nothing to do with the body before me but has everything to do with the soul and the personality within. I fully realize that to most people, I sound confused, even though I’m not. I’m very secure with my own self, which is very comfortable being mostly in between all the dichotomies into which the bulk of people divide themselves.

What I’m saying is that if my outer body matched my inner gender, it would have neither broad hips nor broad shoulders. It would have both small breasts and a modest penis. It’s facial features would confuse the eye, soft curves and hard lines blended androgynously. It would likely even have three “sex chromosomes”, XXY, just to add to the ambiguity. It would be hard for me to look “normal”. It would be impossible to classify as “M or F” on those forms. It would have made growing up even harder for me than it was.

Look. I grew up a tomboy. I complained every time my parents made me wear a dress to something until they stopped making me. I played with Barbies who weren’t fashion models but loved to camp out. I played with Hot Wheels and didn’t care which was the fastest, but loved the ones that stuck to the track no matter how convoluted I twisted it. My favorite books were the ones about horses and dogs and more fantastical things, not the ones about princesses or sports heroes. I’ve confused people most of my life, in other words. I reacted by choosing friends who didn’t care, who took me as I was - which was exactly what I did for them. I sat with the rest of the outcasts at lunch, and generally ignored everyone else. I took more than my fair share of abuse, but at home, I always knew I was loved, and that helped me understand that I was okay. And yes, I did therapy, because at one point in my life I stopped being sure that I liked who I was.

Being different isn’t easy. I feel for my trans-gendered friends who have to decide whether or not to disclose their histories. I feel for my kinky friends who have to hide that part of themselves to keep their jobs. I feel for my homosexual friends who don’t hold hands in public because other people judge. I feel for my pagan friends who don’t discuss religion because theirs isn’t mainstream. I feel for my poly friends who get tired of explaining their relationships. But I also feel for my cis-gendered, vanilla, heterosexual, Christian monogamous friends who have never had their own identity challenged, who haven’t gone through an agony of self-acceptance and come out the other side with the extra strength that being yourself despite what everyone else thinks gave me and my outcast friends. I feel for the ones who’ve never considered suicide to avoid the pain of being different and had to reject that because it was the easy way out. I feel for the ones who’ve had an easy life, and who might now, because they know me, have to actually think about why they judge others, or look down on them, try to change them, or even ignore that any other way of being is valid and liveable.

I preach tolerance and kindness and love because these are the things I value and these are the things that help bring people together despite differences and differing choices. I’m more than happy to help people think through their own beliefs, to try to help them understand what they’ve never had to before. To help people relate more harmoniously with each other. To show them that my beliefs and lifestyle do not invalidate or endanger their own. To share the strength I gained through my own journey.

Our individual differences only make our whole world stronger and more beautiful.

I wish you love and happiness, but I hope that your own path hasn’t been so easy that you blindly judge. I hope that you can see the beauty around you, both in the bountiful variety that nature provides us and in the glorious variety of people you interact with. Be kind to each other, please. And even more importantly, be kind to yourselves.

Happy Equinox, all.

How I Met My Drum.

Not so long ago I attended a pagan women's retreat with about a hundred and fifty awesome people from many different walks of life and many different core beliefs. It was the first large pagan gathering I'd ever attended, and I can talk for hours about the people I met there and the things I learned. I'm sure more of them will make it into things that I talk about here in the future, but for now I'd like to talk about just four of them. One was a woman who needed to hear what I said, one needed to know someone saw her, one had something to teach me and one will be my companion for years.

The story doesn't begin with them, of course, or I'd be done telling it already. It begins with a sleepless night - one of the kinds where you've done everything right and you're exhausted and you really should drop off and sleep soundly all night. I woke up after a couple of hours and nothing, not even my tried and true meditation session let me get back to sleep. So with a cabin full of deeply dozing friends, I decided to take the meditation further, to journey into the spirit realms and ask those who help me what I should do.

Hint for those who are just beginning to journey: never give your guides and teachers such a wide open question when what you really want is assistance with the down to earth business of falling asleep. They are apt to answer the bigger question and ignore your other needs. I was still awake at dawn, long after the journey was over.

The journey itself seemed to take a very long time. I went up, then wandered around in the dim, soft, grey cloud forms of the upper world for what seemed like hours before one of my guides came to me. I wasn't led far before being shown a vision. The clouds in front of me solidified into the head of a dragon the deep grey of pewter, every detail sharp and fierce. That image morphed into a wolf's head, then a bear's, then a raccoon's. Then the image faded back into shapeless clouds and I was left alone. I had the distinct impression that these four images were things I should look for and, more importantly, pay attention to. The journey was over. I went back to my bunk and tossed and turned until dawn.

At breakfast, in a big communal dining room, a couple of friends and I shared a table with folks we hadn't met before. We talked with them - just the easy chatting of slightly sleepy people having breakfast. But something I said grabbed the attention of one of the women and we spoke a little more about the subject. It wasn't until she turned to say something to her friend that I noticed her earring. It was one of those cuffs that grips the outer edge of the ear, and hers was a tiny dragon. The face peering at me from the top of her ear was exactly the face from my vision.

Later that day, I visited the vendor area and picked out a couple of mementos for myself. When I asked the woman at the table if she could take a credit card she said yes, if she could get a cell signal. When she turned on her phone to check, I saw the wolf face from my dream on her wallpaper. Neither of us was busy, so I stayed and chatted with her for a bit.

Much later, as I walked to the site of the main ritual with my brand new drum (the little drum I'd bought on Amazon and wasn't totally comfortable with), I met some other folks with drums. The one who seemed to be leading them asked while we labored up the hill if I wanted to join them as they drummed for the ceremony. I admitted I'd never done so - not only was it my first ritual of any size, but it was also my first drum. She and the other drummers with her welcomed me anyway. Guess what was on the front of her shirt that I didn't see until we reached the top of the hill and had a chance to face each other? The bear from my vision, of course.

The planners had scheduled a drum circle later that evening, and I got to learn more about drums and drumming from the woman in the bear shirt. She demonstrated the healing power of a drum, which was something I hadn't realized was possible. Playing with other drummers was what hooked me, though, with the vibrations from the other drum voices humming through my own drum's frame. It was later that I loaned my little drum to a young woman who wanted to join in and left them with other drummers.

The death of my cheap little drum with the sad spirit came at her hands, but I claim my part of its end. I knew my hand-made drumstick was harder than most, and I didn't warn her. Nor did I stick around to show her what little I'd learned. It was she who hit hard and near the edge, but it was also she who was truly sorry that the thin goatskin drumhead had torn all the way to the center of the drum. After she had apologized profusely, offered to pay for the drum, and nearly teared up over the incident, I gave her the damaged drum to take care of. There was a flash of insight involved in that decision, and I knew it was the right thing to do. It will be interesting if I ever find out why.

The day after the event I couldn't get drums off my mind. I knew from intuition, playing with other drummers at the circle, and my short time with the little drum that I wanted a frame drum, preferably a Native American design. I searched online for a store that might have more than one and then called to make sure I'd be allowed to touch and hear the drums before making a decision. I found one. I spent a moment before I left to ask the runes for guidance and drew sowelu, the rune of the sun and of wholeness. I didn't understand, but I still went.

The store had several drums to chose from. Most were round. One was very much like the bear woman's drum. I touched each drum, and tapped most of them with a soft beater to hear their voices. I liked several, but the one that spoke most clearly to me was an octagonal cowhide drum with a large scar on the drum face. Its voice had different tones at different areas, deep resonance and ringing undertones. And the scar on its face looked like a triangular animal ear, a flaw that I thought gave her character. An ear that looks exactly like the ear of the raccoon from my vision. I fell in love with her, bought her, and took her home.

I did look up real life raccoon pictures to verify that her scar looks most like the ear of a raccoon and not some other animal. A rough patch in the hide marks her eye. Faint lines in the hide sketch in a mask and define the top of the raccoon's face. And when she's held up to the light, the structure of her back throws the image of the sun's rays onto her face, just in case you're still wondering about the significance of the rune I drew. I've given her some feathers, some shiny beads, two silver hawk bells and a raccoon tail. We're still getting to know each other, but I know one thing for sure. This is my drum, and I am her shaman. Many things led to us meeting. Each step was necessary. And the vision from my journey is complete. The raccoon is the spirit in my drum - another guide, another teacher, another helper, another friend. I've seen her face when I've played her, looking out at me just like the raccoon in my vision.

And now you, too, know her story. And maybe you also caught another lesson I learned. The four images from my vision didn't manifest in the same way. When my spirit guides told me to pay attention to those four faces, I didn't know what to expect. Not knowing, I saw each encounter as a surprise and took delight in it, even as I paid attention to the bearer of the image. I didn't have to actively seek them out - I even wondered if I'd missed the raccoon somewhere. And all four images brought me to people, even if one of them is a drum person with a raccoon face. I might have missed the significance of each encounter without the vision, though.

My guides might be pretty strict about answering the exact question I ask, but their answers always are always good. Even when I don't understand them at the time. If I keep my mind open, I'll learn what the answers mean. Usually. Eventually.

I hope you do too. 

Illness Is Also A Teacher.

Not only does being seriously ill remind me how blessed I am to have people around me who care about me, but it also gives me far too much time to think. They just aren't usually very clear thoughts. Except for this flash of insight I had today.

We have a lot of serious diseases our species survives on a regular basis, starting with flu. But we do survive them. And we do it because where other sick creatures take themselves away from others, we turn to our fellow humans for help, care and support.

Think about that while I go finish recovering from flu.

And by the way, if you're one of the folks that have helped me through this one - thanks. I needed you all.

Spring Equinox Poem

On Love, Tolerance and Compassion.

Romantic love is just a gradient of the whole spectrum of love. I love my computer, my cat, my sister, the woods, my crazy uncle, my friends, my sub. It’s all different, but sort of the same. Even the love I had for each past tense husband was different. Love is not exclusive, not limited, maybe not perfectly definable. Love has nothing to do with sex, although the two are often mixed up. Love could be sorted (the ancient Greeks had four words for it), but where the lines are drawn will always be in contention. So sad for love to be fought over. So much more happy to share it, spread it around, wallow in love. Can I love more than one person? Hell yeah. Can I love everyone? Hmmm.

Tolerance for anything? No. Anything safe, sane and consensual? Yes. Not just talking BDSM, either. That’s for everything from religion to sex to work to other social situations to media. So a guy wants to let some other guy run his life totally? Good for them. A guy wants to put his cock in a pre-teen’s ass? There’s nothing sane or safe or consensual about that, anymore than if he wanted to put his cock up a sheep’s ass. He wants to have sex with his mix sexed adult harem who also love to be whipped by him - more power to them all. Someone wants to believe that his religion is the only way to get to heaven and the rest of us poor souls are doomed, fine. But if his religion demands that he either kill or convert all other people to his religion, then no, that’s not consensual, not sane, and most certainly not safe. I certainly don’t have to agree with your point of view, and I don’t require you to agree with mine. I am never going to agree, though, that a Jew, a Catholic or a Buddhist is in any way superior to any flavor of Pagan any more than I’d agree that any Pagan - myself included - is better or more enlightened than any member of an organized religion. It’s that wondrous diversity of humanity that makes us interesting, that lets us learn from each other and try new things, new combinations. If we were all perfectly the same, the world would be a dull, dull place. I’ll tolerate anything that doesn’t damage someone else against their will; that is safe, sane and consensual.

Compassion comes through those two. Love brings care along with it. Tolerance unlimits who we feel comfortable caring for. Compassion is what brings a community together after a disaster, no matter how small, to care for its members. Just because that person with a broken heart after a breakup is Jewish doesn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate a shoulder to cry on, even if that is a Pagan shoulder. And just because the man who lost his home to a fire was born a woman doesn’t mean he couldn’t use a hand rebuilding - or maybe that old pair of jeans you’ve outgrown and the couple of extra blankets in the back of the closet. Compassion is something we can be as generous with as our love and our tolerance.

Exercise all three for the best possible emotional health. And I'm not just talking about your own.