MLC - Our Treasure

Photo by:  Barbara Baumann

Mary Lou Cook

April 29th, 1918 - October 7th, 2013

Mary Lou Cook's last words to us:  Our job is to be happy.  Ask for spiritual help, it is always available.  Establish healthy boundaries.  Guilt is optional.  Be creative, have fun, embrace life.  Live in joy even though you have all the facts.  Live in the present and realize freedom.  Forgiveness is the key for happiness.  We have a choice between peace and fear.  Make your own rules, forget "ought" and "should".  Find your authentic self.

Mary Lou Cook was my first mentor in community organizing and progressive politics.  She was the kind of person people dream of being.  She was brave, thoughtful, and kind.  She lived peace and was a great example of that reality.  MLC was human, she had her trials and tribulations, as do we all.  She showed me how to rise above during countless hours in the sitting area of her bedroom.

Co-organizing the Dennis Kucinich for President Campaign in 2003, galvanized us into a great thinking, feeling, being of action.  MLC provided the spiritual power of tapping into the universe for decision making via our discussions.  I provided the "down on the ground" data and made our visions happen.  We were a real team.

Everyone who knows MLC has a story about her.  Yesterday, at her memorial, I heard lots of them.  I also heard the facts about her.  But, I want this piece to illuminate WHO she was - not in context of any other person.

MLC had a book of names and phones number (something most of us can no longer imagine).  This was her book of real world power.  She had the numbers of the movers and shakers, stars and politicians, spiritual leaders and 1%er CEOs. Every one of them was at MLC's beck and call.

Why?  Because she listened.  And, gave "consejos".  Consejos may translate from Spanish to English as advice, but that's not really the gist of it.  It's that life advice that only the most wise of our grandmothers can give that I define as consejos.  Mary Lou Cook listened and she gave consejos.  It's a lost art.  Something of a bygone era.  MLC's consejos were always right on target.  Sometimes, a person couldn't stand how on target they were!

Mary Lou Cook lived her life as a woman who "ladies" emulated.  She had a grace that was evident in her every movement.  She was deliberate and expected the same of others.  Some people may have thought of her as an old lady when they first met her.  But, the more you were around her, the more you realized that her grace and deliberateness belied the absolutely joyous spirit with unbound energy who lived within that tiny body.  MLC was a sprite clothed as a graceful grandmother.

MLC's eyes twinkled.  Stars were jealous of those blue beauties. They seldom wept, despite the heaviness she often encountered in the world.  Her smile illuminated Santa Fe.  In fact, PNM probably owes her a bundle for that light.

I'll never forget the silver fingernails, and the huge silver octagon-shaped waffle patterned ring that sat on her hand.  That ring was the fly on the wall.  It heard all, saw all, knew all.  Her daughter, Karen, now wears it.  It hold so much of us - those whom Mary Lou mentored.

MLC paid attention.  She knew who and what belonged where.  She knew what timing meant.  She was able to speed things up or slow them down if needed.  She made sure things happened as they should.

I said before that Mary Lou Cook was human.  But, in writing this, I now wonder - was she really?  So much of her was from a place beyond the physical world. I've always called MLC the Grand Dame of Spirituality.  I can't wait to see her work as pure spirit, now.

Mary Lou Cook was my mentor.  She called me sister.  I live by her words and in her spirit!  Te quiero mucho, MLC!  Que descanse en paz, comadre!


 http://www.silverplanet.com/lifestyles/silver-stars/silver-star-mary-lou-cook/54130#.UnLHPicdTpo

Seed Sovereignty Symposium, (a. k. a., Traditional Agriculture and Sustainable Living Conference) 2013

 

Keynote Speaker Vandana Shiva; Phillip Charos & Claissa Durán, Registrars

Seed Sovereignty Symposium/Traditional Agriculture & Sustainable Living Conference

    Conference Website:  http://4bridges.org/annual-conference/2013-conference/

   

    This was my seventh year and my husband, Phillip's, third year as Conference Registrars.  Each year I've sat at the table for two straight days, greeting old friends, neighbors, and like-minded newcomers to one of the most spiritual and thought provoking experiences available.  Our conference comes out of Tesuque Pueblo and the work to preserve traditional tribal agriculture, spirituality - life.  As organizers, many of us have worked the gamut from public demonstrations to lobbying for bills in the New Mexico Legislature, and working to educate our Congresspeople.  But, it is this conference that creates the opportunity for true healing and life-honoring change.

     At the heart of the conference sits the spiritual leaders of indigenous nations and communities (including the annual participation of the Thirteen Grandmothers).  After listening to one spiritual leader's words in one of the conference panels, a native friend and former conference volunteer said that her DNA had been changed by the Mayan spiritual leader's talk.  This is not to be taken lightly, especially in considering my friend's involvement in her own sovereign nation and her position at a native college.  

    This year we hosted over 400 students from local schools (the majority of whom were 5th graders).  This was a brilliant step taken by conference organizers.  Planting seeds early gives the indigenous communities time to water and care for seeds that will mature and bear their own seeds.  Our area's youth were given an education in a world in which the sickness of materialism and modern life have no roots.  

    Each year the conference is different.  This year, I felt the abundance in our community.  We heard the messages and felt the spirit together.  We prayed and were blessed.  We broke bread together and lingered in dynamic conversations.  We learned about one another and our work to uphold the sovereignty of traditional cultures.  We laughed together and held each other's gaze respectfully.  Our hearts beat together.  Many experiences.  One people.

Power House

El Parasol North is the perfect place to confront your demons and to be told that addiction to thoughts about those demons can be released.  As, for the releasing of the demon, I'll be praying that it can be released, too.

My demon now has a very succinct name:  Institutionalized Capitalism.  I'd like to thank my friend, Donna House (powerful woman, long time organizer and member of the Diné nation) for sitting with me and helping me to come into a stronger understanding about my fear of the corrupting power of cash.

Institutionalized Capitalism, in my definition, is the dehumanizing effect of capitalism on individuals and their families, which allows them to abuse the resources with which Mother Earth blesses us.  It allows them not only to benefit from the abuse of resources on a cash basis, but on a power level that is ALL about subjugating other beings.

I'm thinking a lot about this, because when I'm working in the community, for community, my fears come up.  I keep cycling through them until I can release them.  This is part of my purpose - to heal myself and prepare myself for what happens after I leave this earth as pure spirit.

If you have anything to add or experiences you'd like to share about Institutionalized Capitalism, please feel free to do so here.  If you don't want your post posted publically, please state that and I will treat it as a private message (I have to approve each post individually to make them viewable by the public).

Thanks!
Clarissa

Recently "American"

I've been thinking a lot about the subject of assimilation into "American" society since our Durán family reunion this summer.  Our family was fortunate that a few of our cousins had worked on our family tree/history and built a website so that we could share the knowledge previous to the reunion.

During the reunion, our cousin Dr. José Rivera spoke on our family tree/history.   This gave me an entirely new perspective on the broad European and Native Mesoamerican mix that I embody.  Further, our reunion committee held several meetings.  My father was the reunion director.  I was the registrar.  My father and I traveled to Las Vegas, New Mexico (where the reunion was held) several times to these meetings.  We discussed his recent readings on the history of northern New Mexico.  We debated.  We discussed.  He talked. I listened. I learned.

I learned that a part of my family that I disliked - namely the ambition to "succeed" in mainstream American society (one that immigrants often adopt in order to survive) - was a normal response to a genocidal situation.

The problem was that I've never seen myself as an immigrant.  I've always thought of myself as native to this land.  Sure, I took History of New Mexico at Northern New Mexico College, but the phrase, "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us" never mattered much to me except as phrase used in organizing for social justice.  It's become very personal to me.

At our Compadrazco on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo this Spring, I learned that when the U.S. came to what is now called northern New Mexico, they burned our villages and burned our seeds. We hid in the hills.  We were hunted.  They wanted us dead.  If they couldn't kill us now, they would get us by ensuring we starved to death without seeds/crops/food. This thought always brings me to tears.  My father reminds me - we were at war.  It is a different perspective than the Holocaust.

However, those whose families lived in the outposts of the Spanish/Mexican empire know, it wasn't a war for us.  We didn't have the defenses that could match our enemy.  It was genocide.  As a people of mixed history who owned a piece of American leaders' Manifest Destiny, we were expendable.  As a people who would not be beaten down, we were better left dead.  Yes.  We were nearly on the same plane as our tribal brothers and sisters.  We were not human.  We held no value.  Nor do we now.

That is what we as Chicanas/os live each day.  We are a people of many peoples. We fought the country in which we now find ourselves as citizens.  Our land was taken from us through chicanery.  Our relationships with our native brothers and sisters was broken and used as a tool to divide us.  We have had to declare ourselves not native, but European to survive.  We have held ourselves as only half people to this country's government.  We may only hold ourselves as whole - Meztizos, Chicanos, Genizaros - within our own families, circle, communities.

Like our native sisters and brothers, we have hidden the depth of our religion(s), our ceremonies and traditions.  We have watched as some tried to sell our sacred.  We have fought.  Sometimes we've won.  Mostly, we have fallen into a bog and been confused by mist as to the way to get free.  Mostly, we struggle.  That is not a meek word - struggle.  It denotes a constant battle that takes strength, stamina, determination and faith to continue waging.  Mostly, we are constantly seeking ourselves in this foreign world.

Immigrants. My grandfather remembered someone coming to his family's home when he was a child and telling them that the family had to choose whether to remain in "America" and become U. S. citizens or to move further south and remain part of the country that had only recently become "Mexico".  Choose the victor and remain as peasants on their land or choose the way we'd known for both 400 years (as Europeans) and milenia (as native peoples).  What was this choice to them?  How did they make it?  Many of our families went south.  Why did we stay?

This blog is now my personal journal to knowing the mysteries of ME along with all of the actions I choose to undertake in the struggle.  It's the time to learn and know myself through the deepest part of me - the part that IS powerful, whole and free.

Bioneers Cultivating Women's Leadership Training 2013 at Ocamora

I've entered a new world.  A world of light.  My dreams are playing themselves out before my eyes.  Every resource comes to me as I think of it - sometimes before. Every opportunity becomes my gift. This is the world into which CWL inducted me.  And, I am not alone.

I spent five days in my Durán family homeland:  Ocaté, New Mexico.  

                           Photo by:  Dalene Coriz


I was visited by the spirit of my people.  I asked for and found my path illuminated.  I was protected, guided, and healed by formed and formless.  I was lead on a journey by our facilitators Toby and Sarah.  There, I found a concentrated power named Clarissa.

My CWL sisters held the mirror and I came shining through.  Most people will never truly know themselves on a soul level.  Most people will never be offered the experience to gain that knowledge.  I am grateful to have been.

 I can't really say more about it.  It's just something you'd have to know.  My experience has changed me profoundly.  And, for that I'm grateful, too.

Thank you all! 

Compadrazco: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo & Beyond

It's been a long time since I've put words down.  I often have poems/words travel through me, but these days I haven't made the effort to focus them into physical form.  Yesterday, however, I was so inspired by the speakers of the event organized by Luis Peña, Compadrazco:  Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo & Beyond, that I had to write.  And, here's what I've written:

One of the things that came out of the Compadrazco: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo & Beyond for me (yesterday) was that we seek to know who we are, our place in the world, our importance through a very individual lens and that what Jorge Alberto Garcia Atilano was getting to was the coming together through compassion, via a larger spirituality that allows for all things and all beings, where the center of the spiral is the destiny of each individual life and our lives as one simultaneously. What we care for is our destiny. Our destiny defines us. And, we are whole within the consciousness of that reality.

That was my post on Facebook.  Then I listened to Jorge's words again

http://culturalenergy.org/serna.htm

and here's what my focus and intention are now:

My conscious mind cannot fathom the diversity of all that we represented when we came as Conquerors and settlers under the Spanish flag:  Crypto-Jew, Muslims/Moors, Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Basque, on and on . . .

I cannot fathom who we met and conquered:  Caribe Natives; Aztecs - who had been any number of pueblos and past civilizations, such as Mayans; Tewa, Apache, Comanche, Ute (Aztecas), Zuni, on and on . . .

WE - out of all these civilizations, nations, peoples, ancestors - developed a life in northern New Mexico that is so unique, we take offense at being recognized as anything but that culture.

Our culture holds all the seeds of that past and gives life through ceremony and tradition.  We may argue and discuss amongst one another about who knows more, embodies more, practices more of our culture, but in the end, those interactions only strengthen us.

We have come to the place where we can see ourselves as EVERYTHING; not nothing, but EVERYTHING, because we ARE defined.  Our peoples, our past have brought us to this moment where WE ARE.

I look in the mirror and see more than smoke.  I see that we are all the ancestors from every lineage smiling back at us in the mirror.  We are ALL.  We hold ourselves as a people.  We must use our traditions and ceremonies to strengthen that identity.

Take hold of your piece of the collective, with me.  Let us pull it taut, like a blanket off which our children and grandchildren can leap into a higher consciousness - a place where We ARE Sovereign.

 

 

íCHILE FEST 2012!

Chile, chile y mas chile!  I love chile.  Who doesn't?  My mom is one of those who has chile for every meal.  In fact, she loves it so much that she takes packets of it with her when she travels abroad!  Now that's a chile lover!

Monday, September 3rd we have the privilege of celebrating this beloved food, crop, plant.  We join together to celebrate our cultura, comida, y familias!  Chile has sustained the people of this area for hundreds if not thousands of years.  It knocks out colds, it warms the heart, and sometimes burns the tongue - giving us that heady rush of endorphins!

The Española Farmers' Market has held a chile roasting and tasting for several years.  This year ¡El Tiempo! Nuevo México is honored to take part by holding a traditional NM green chile cook-off!  We invite everyone to enter.  Our discerning judges will award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes to the best chile in the land! 

If you'd like to enter the cook-off, please see the website for official rules:  www.eltiemponm.org   Click on the CHILE FEST title and you will be taken to an information page with the official rules.  We hope you will take part; it's a great day of celebration for the Farmers' Market and the cook-off will add to the festivities!

See you there!

Date:  Monday, September 3rd

Location:  Española Farmers' Market  (click here for a map:  https://www.facebook.com/events/306816042750066/)

Time:  10am-5pm  - Cook-off entries must be present by 1pm, judging at 1:30pm