Spiritual Cowgirl

Check out this hilarious and deeply moving new documentary about a Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland! The two male documentarians trace the path of 4 girls, ages 7 through 17 through the transformative experience of the week-long camp. The filmmakers say they got an in-depth look at what it means to be a girl these days, “The film that we ended up making…wasn’t just cute girls with guitars. It was about girlhood, about why it meant so much to these girls to go to a place where they could be loud, where they were not worried about what they were dressed as or what their weight was”.

When these girls first got to the camp, most were extremely quiet. Even if they had loud voices, they were, as the filmmakers found, sort of energetically “silenced”. The more the filmmakers interviewed these girls, they became aware of just how much the culture, media, and male/female dynamics have silenced them. Put a guitar in a boy’s hands and he’s screaming and rocking out, put one in a girls hands, and she stands there for a while, not sure if she should rock out. Shyness, lack of confidence, strong body-image concerns were abundant in the interviews – in fact, one of the girls says this: “I just accept that I hate myself and I don’t really think about it”. The filmmakers said it’s hard to talk to these girls about “being silenced” by the culture around them when they are, well, silenced.

But at rock camp most of these girls find their voices again, they taste what it’s like to break free from the subtle but dominant energies that bind them, and they realize that being “loud” is not about the volume of your voice, it’s about reclaiming and freely expressing your unique feminine power.

You Tube Video Link

My favorite trilogy of all time, Phillip Pullman’s, His Dark Materials, opens soon in theaters with “The Golden Compass”. As expected, conservative Catholics and Christian Fundamentalists are already protesting, claiming the film is “anti-Christian” just because the enemies in the book are called the Magisterium and they work for the Church, and because God gets off’ed in the third book, and because Pullman considers himself an atheist.

side note: some of the most deeply “spiritual” people I know consider themselves atheist. And, considering how Pullman’s trilogy is one of the most “spiritual” stories I have ever read, I think I might have to add “atheist” to my spiritual tag line: “gnostic-tantric-pagan-dervish with a twist of atheism”. And considering the vast amounts of spiritual misinformation gumming up this planet, I think these “Pullman type of atheists” might just save the world, but that’s another post.

Theology Professor, Donna Freitas, countered the Catholics and Christian protesters in her article for the Boston Globe. She believes Phillip Pullman’s trilogy is actuallly “deeply Christian”. Well, in my opinion, Pullman would shudder at that diagnostic, but I understand what Freitas is suggesting by deeply. What Freitas, a liberal Christian, sees in Pullman’s work is what anyone with an open mind, beating heart and divinely animated spirit would see, be they “deeply” Buddhist, Jewish, Sufi, Tantric, Pagan, or yes, Christian.

What Pullman celebrates is simply the very essence of life, something he calls “Dust”, which is free for all of us to participate in, and engage with, on a deeply intimate and personal level. Because, check it: this Dust, needs us just as much as we need it. Tis true. “Dust” is actively reaching towards us, constantly seeking contact, offering caresses, aching for us to want it as much as it wants us.

We do not need to move up a hierarchical order to experience Dust. We need no intermediaries to connect us with Dust, and by breaking out of the norms imposed on us by external authorities (even those who feel they’re acting in our “best” interest), by trusting ourselves, by working together, we can experience such magic, such beauty, and such love - all from simply engaging life with all we’ve got. This is Dusty spirituality. In a red nutshell.

Now, Pullman’s books don’t dig deeply into Dust till the last book, of course, so the conservative Catholics and Christians are preparing the bonfires slightly ahead of time, because they’re terrified that once the blockbuster movie hits, parents will unknowingly buy their sweet innocent children the entire book trilogy for the holidays and then, gasp, all will be lost and the world will surely go to hell in a Prada hand basket.

Prof. Freitas offers these selected red bites from a “deeply” Christian perspective:

“For Christians, then, perhaps the most important concept of all in the story is that divinity isn’t just a being, but a substance that loves us and animates us, yet has a mind of its own. In the books, Dust’s love for humans is unconditional, even though they often do things to hurt and deplete Dust’s influence and presence. Dust has many names in “His Dark Materials”: Wisdom, Consciousness, Spirit, Dark Matter.”

“Pullman’s Dust certainly moves beyond orthodox Christian ideas about God. Dust is a ’spirit’ that transcends creation, but all living beings are made of Dust, so Dust is a part of creation. While Dust is indeed the divine fabric of the worlds of “His Dark Materials,” Dust is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and immutable. Dust is as dependent on creation for its sustenance as we are dependent on Dust for ours.”

“Dust also has a distinctly female cast. When Pullman personifies Dust, and he does on occasion, he uses the pronoun she. Evoking the third person of the trinity as female is nothing new - in fact it’s biblical. Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) is the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit. One finds God spoken of as she in both Proverbs and the Psalms (among other places). Framing the divine through Spirit-Sophia is nothing new either - this is a move made famous by the work of revered Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, a professor at Fordham, in ‘She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse,’ now a classic text among Christian feminist scholars.”

“Dust also reflects strains in feminist theology that reframe the divine as feminine and hold that Christians’ relationship with the divine is mutual, not hierarchical: We make ourselves vulnerable to God as God makes God’s self vulnerable to us.”

“Pullman’s characters who discover the true God fall so deeply in love with the divine that they will sacrifice everything - even the bonds of first love. They are willing to hold on to this God even if it requires that they wage war with the powers that be, the authorities called Church and Magisterium - those who rule by secrecy and serve a false God who takes the form of the old man in the sky.”

“God is not dead, then: A false God has died and the true God - a feminine divine - is revealed.” – Donna Freitas

Ah, Eve’s Red apple is out yet again, how delicious, how confrontational, how very ripe for the tasting.

What trilogy of books makes the true Gods smile and the false ones curl up and snarl? Ah, that would be His Dark Materials – the brilliantly divine trilogy written by Phillip Pullman illustrating the dusty, yet bright lives of a young heroine and a cast of characters so noble and multi-faceted you’d think they were from a different Universe. This is a piece of work that many would call “spiritual but not religious” and if you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. And read it outloud. To your friends. Your lovers. Your goldfish. Why am I writing about this? Because the first in the trilogy, “The Golden Compass” has been made into a movie (with actors like Nicole Kidman and the new hottie James Bond to warm your tootsies) and is coming out next December. And I just found the trailor. And I’m So Scared - that the film is gonna suck buckets. I mean how can they accurately deliver the subtle spiritual winks and deliberate orthodox dogma knocking that make these book so very red? I mean is the adrenaline addicted mainstream ready for ethical (not moral) complexity? For characters who are not clearly “evil” or “good”? For gay angels? Whoops, that’s in the last book. Ah well, I await somewhat eagerly, somewhat worriedly till December. For your viewing pleasure…

How fierce is your light? How unwrapped is your gift? How big do you Love? How do you fuse Spirit with Action? What’s the meaning of life? Eh?

I have to ask (and with a quirky yet polite Canadian accent) because I’ve just spent the past few months listening to visionaries answer these very questions posited to them by Academy Award winning Canadian documentarian, Velcrow Ripper. Yes, that’s really his name, I think it rocks, so let’s move on to the important stuff. I met Velcrow on www.Zaadz.com, as he was traveling the world filming FierceLight: When Spirit Meets Action. This is the second film in his trilogy, which began with the award winning film ScaredSacred (if you haven’t checked this film out – do so now). This talented Canadian happened to need an assistant for the American leg of the shoot, so I eagerly hopped on his magic red fun furry carpet ride.

We interviewed a whole host of electric visionaries ranging from Alice Walker to Starhawk, Paul Hawkins to Sam Harris, Western Shoshone medicine men and women to a 90 year old Franciscan nun who’s been arrested a dozen times for protesting at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. From spiritual hip hop artist Prof. Pitt to mystic extraordinaire Andrew Harvey, Bell Hooks to Congressman John Lewis, and we finished off with Desmond Tutu. Yep, after Brad Pitt interviewed him. Have you checked out the new Vanity Fair? Did you notice Desmond was wearing Red on one of the covers in this magazine’s “Red” issue? This color is getting some major kudos lately, in fact I’m leaning towards purchasing a new red razor phone. But I digress. Back to my adventures in film assisting. Yeah, this juicy chunk of my life has been deliciously inspiring and so over the next few weeks I’m gonna share some shiny wisdoms (call them Fierce Red Lights) I have learned from traveling and visiting with such extraordinary humans.

To begin with, Ripper’s film, Fierce Light (in theaters fall of 2008), is about spiritual activism - what the hell it is, where it came from, how it’s shifting the world today, and how you, yes you, can be a part of it, if you’re not already. Fierce Light is a synonym for what Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. called Truth Force or Soul Force. It all started when Gandhi created what is referred to as Satyagraha - a plan to develop our inner lives for the transformation of society. Gandhi experienced the truth that knowing yourself (which often entails working on your self) and being your true self makes you a much more powerful activist, not to mention a more effective and loving human - someone who is truly being the change they wish to see in the world. Why is this way of being so important? Because moving with this Soul Force, living from this inner source of love, means your light cannot be dimmed or turned off or separated from other lights. Great leaders like Gandhi and King knew that acting from this blaze of fierce love is the only way we can create authentic, effective, and lasting change on this here chaotic spinning planet of ours.

And guess what? This fierce light is what you’re here to be. Yes, you. In your own unique way. In your own special time. But…we need ya, like now already. By the way, encouraging us all to beam so bright is the very reason I wrote The Red Book. And it’s most directly reflected in Chapter 9 in The Red Book: When Sparks Fly: Know Your Self, transform the World.

Giddy Up!