Hard Lessons with White Teachers, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Krista Tippett

I write as a dancer and one who upholds kinesthetic, body-to-body intelligence as our ancestors and Indigenous people do, honoring the very real dance of life.

I don’t speak for anyone else and have nothing to lose by speaking. Perhaps this is why I can say what I have to say and have chosen to do so repeatedly in my life. I respect the teachers named below for what they do to make a difference.

I’m publishing this on Mary Magdalene's feast day; blessed be her wisdom and truth and the long lineage of embodied, ensouled teachings of women worldwide.

“Those who do not dance, do not know the way of life.”
-Jesus, Apocryphal Acts of John

My trip to Greece was a purification initiation, a walk through fire and fever, and a reminder of my life purpose: to foster freedom.

Being sick most of the trip, I note the suggestion of my collaborator, Phil Porter, “Don’t make any decisions when you have a cold.” Illness impacts perspective.

Journeying into The Common Good?

I had little energy to dance or socialize with other participants during the 10-day salon led by Krista Tippet, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Allison Russell, Joe Henry, and JT Nero on the island of Patmos, Greece. Instead, I witnessed, like Goddess Athena’s little wise owl, a contemporary Greek icon. So much so that when I saw my friend Despina’s owl painting in her shop on Patmos, I grabbed it. Her incredulous eyes and red kick-ass boots couldn’t say it better. Whooot the Hell?

I got activated—so activated that I deliberated about whether to share what you are about to read. Why can't I find more grace? Why not focus on the good? Why not use my energy to make a positive difference? Unfortunately, quaking with world events and U.S. politics, I can't put aside what I witnessed in Greece. To be sure, It's not about the Greek people or culture. It's about obstacles to the wisdom of body and soul across the board.

If you decide to read this, know that I've chosen to include you to see if what I'm learning relates to your wisdom about how to proceed in scary times.

I've spent my life exploring and creating reliable, liveable, gracious practice spaces that heal, open up genius, and uplift human diversity and wisdom. My body-wise research has required an examination of the consequences of forms and behaviors across disciplines. Along the way, I've been thoroughly initiated in the limits and harm of my dominant, white, middle-class, male-privileged worldview. I playfully call these initiations "Getting called to the principal's office." Today, I vow to take my whiteness upon myself as a condition of my liberation. This means accepting full responsibility to listen and learn when others reflect back to me the limits of who I am as a white woman. It means referencing the voices of those different from me while not diminishing my own liberation journey.

I'm still learning, as are we all, utterly pained as we witness the body politic, our institutions, and Gaia suffer from what is being called a global auto-immune disorder, the human body attacking itself. I am particularly distressed as the co-founder of InterPlay, author of the Art of Ensoulment, and as a cohousing member because I live closer to best practices on our planet. My colleagues across disciplines who've traveled this path agree.

Home from Greece, I am rededicated to systems like InterPlay, the wisdom of soul in body, and the spiritual intelligence of women and queer folk are crucial for what lies ahead.

Enter Kamala Harris.

Perhaps you, too, are restoring health, beauty, dignity, joy, and the supreme human gift- playfulness- our spontaneous accessway into the hilarity of the Cosmic Dance of Love. Anytime I listen to the Change the Story, Change the World podcast, I’m reminded I am not alone! Bill Cleveland’s recent conversation with legendary artist L. O. Sloan inspires me as two wise elders reflect on Art and Democracy.

To the point– why did my very expensive trip to Greece destabilize me?

I expected beauty and, yes, encounters with history. I did not expect to download millennia of monumentalized violence toward women’s spiritual and moral authority. When I signed up to tour the Acropolis and Delphi with the current backdrop of violent male politics in the U.S. and growing archeological evidence of “big women” across Europe who fought the violent incursions of men into the old matriarchal villages. (Listen to Make Matriarchy Great Again) I looked at the Parthenon friezes of Amazon women fighting the Greeks. The myths are bad enough. But this isn’t just art or myth. Why would they put the defeat of women warriors around the top of the Parthenon?

A day later, I sat within arms reach of the former seat of the Oracle of Delphi. In the climate-impacted heat of her ruined mountain temple, theater, treasure, and gymnasium, I felt the horror of the male dominance that subsumed her spiritual and moral authority and then destroyed it.

Back home, MAGA prepped for the Republican convention, brushing aside all criminal charges of the former president.

After an eight-hour ferry ride to the sacred island of Patmos, not far from Turkey on the Aegean Sea, I looked forward to the salon with Krista and Padraig and the invitation to join an extended conversation asking: how can we speak to each other in a way that moves us all, individually and collectively, to growth, learning, creativity, and change?"

I did not expect to witness Krista and Padraig shut down the conversation, control the room, or arrest movement, learning, creativity, and change, especially with women of color.

The setup: Padraig designed sessions for the 80 participants seated at 20 tables with four or five people at each table. Krista offered input from a front mic, as did three musicians who contributed their music and wisdom. I was hopeful about the leaders' artfulness, but in practice, there was little interaction beyond each table. We didn't sing, move, or breathe as a group body. It was a performative space. Grammy award-winning American Roots singer Allison Russell was the one ray of hope.

Padraig raised big questions but barely tapped the expertise or challenges of participants as he controlled and passed the mic. I would've loved even three sentences from the doctor who served at the World Health Organization and CDC during Covid, the Doc specializing in bereavement, the hospice chaplain of a major public hospital, the artist considered to be a godmother of a popular video game, not to mention the women recovering from academia, the medical field, the law, and those with many personal griefs and losses. And what about the BIPOC women?

I might have tolerated the low interaction, but on the day that Padraig and Krista invoked conflict as the theme, Padraig read Five Steps in Addressing Depolarisation from The Centre for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, where he teaches Poetry and Conflict. That document includes research that movement helps depolarization. He suggested we check the hyperlinks in the document. Knowing that his setup wouldn't allow us to move or breathe together, my hand thrust uncontrollably into the air, and I said, without invitation, "I AM A HYPERLINK." Others later offered appreciation for those words.

Afterward, I approached Padraig and offered to share any small exercises from my embodied practices. He said thanks, but at the next salon, when I raised my hand to speak during the group share, he saw me, turned away, and did not give me the mic. Was it intentional? It's been my experience most of my life, so I wasn't surprised, but I was dismayed.

More troubling was the interaction between Padraig and an African-American woman who stood up and expressed her disappointment in the overall salon experience. She asked, "How can a room full of white people talk about the Common Good without minimally addressing that the common good isn't represented in the room?" The bitter belittling of the ways of wisdom, the dancing center, and the soul of African women elders was evident to me. Padraig, art and conflict teacher, standing right next to her, listened as she vulnerably humanized her connection and told him she wasn't trying to be unloving.

His response? "I think I am doing a pretty good job."

When another African American woman added her concerns, Padraig paused. It was a consequential moment of discernment.

Then a white woman stood and said, "I think we should talk about this now." Krista’s response? "I think we're tired, it being the end of a three-hour salon, and we should wait."

Padraig closed the salon. Afterward, I watched women whose professional lives are dedicated to transforming inequity, coordinated BIPOC and White affinity groups. Realizing I didn't have the energy to navigate more, I told a woman who was helping organize the meetings that I wanted to attend, but I was sick. I worried about her as I’d learned earlier that she was recovering from academic structural imbalances and in search of body and soul.

The salon reconvened the next morning. I expected to hear a response to the women's concerns. Instead, Padraig said, "I've decided to continue how I've designed it." He didn't mention that he'd met with the women of color and Krista.

Participants were given no further opportunity to discuss his choices or their impact on the salon. He did not provide a rationale.

With one sentence from Padraig, I felt the room shut down. Rage volcanoed from my groin. My instinct was to leave, just as I did the Sunday morning after Hurricane Katrina when the white church I attended barely referenced the devastating racism and cry of African Americans. It was during those following days of rage that I went to my friend Ruth King. She asked, "How will you dignify your rage?" My response led me to renounce my ordination and disavow myself from any responsibility for white protestant forms. There is a lot more to this story, of course.

I looked around the salon. No one moved. I took a deep breath and stayed.

In the following days, Stephen and I were too sick to attend the salons, concerts, or final meal.

As a leader, Padraig could have humbly said, "I am not equipped for this conversation." Or, "This is a temporary community, and I cannot moderate this conversation alongside the upcoming themes of spirituality and lament." Or he could have improvised. He could have let Allison Russell lead us in a ceremony as one who was equipped and authorized to do so. Why didn't that occur to them?

Krista sat silently by.

There is more. But I'll stop there.

As far as I know, there was no further movement. However, participants did gather to chant, dance with furious joy, jump deliriously into the Aegean Sea, compose songs, play hard, and talk with vibrant animation and openness at shared meals. The bonding and healing were palpable if you were lucky enough to be among them. Stephen and I were not that lucky. Isolated in our room for the last four days and quite sick, it was a powerful reminder of what we experience when illness or disability puts us outside the circle. A beautiful place is not a balm. Please don't say it is when a person can't get help, medicine, a meal delivered to your room, or speak the language when you are far from home.

Knowing what I know now,

• I will not pay to sit or listen to white people who don't offer an integrated body-wise practice and the wisdom of BIPOC people.

• I will privilege BIPOC voices, even when their input may feel harsh.

• I will speak up for the wisdom of body and soul and practice the potent birthrights of communal dance, rhythm story-telling, voicing, song, silence, breath, and touch as essential forms for our time. To bypass or belittle them is to bypass Earth, health, and our connection to greater imagination and intelligence.

• With all the humility I can muster, I will claim that it is women's inheritance and legacy to bring the spiritual and moral authority of earth-centered intelligence; to do this, I will no longer be neutral or agnostic about gender. The time of the Goddess is Now. And if not?

• I will ask that women elders be included in discernment as we have the most life experience and know about suffering.

• I will continue to partner with men who respect and uplift women's experiences.

Please help me create the salon I need. Share comments with me and others if you have thoughts, wisdom, or different ideas. How does my experience relate or not relate to yours?

Here are a few resources to aid the conversation.

Read a sample of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira in your online bookstore.

Watch The Goddess Remembered, part 1 of a 3-part series that includes The Burning Times and Full Circle. The last images of Delphi and Athens validate what I felt in this salute to 35,000 years of goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The film features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Luisah Teish, Jean Bolen, and others, all of whom link the loss of goddess-centric societies with today's environmental crisis.

To close, I pray to do as the elder, healer and wise woman María Sabina, suggests,

Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.

Heal yourself with mint, with neem and eucalyptus.

Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile.

Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon.

Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars.

Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain.

Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.

Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead.

Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.

Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine

– María Sabina