Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America's Soul

Today is Veteran’s Day.  The following editorial was written Bill Distler.   Our daughters go to school together; I know how lucky I am to know Bill. Thanks for opening your heart to his wisdom.

Veterans Day has always been difficult for me.  Most of us who have been in war don’t get pleasure from talking about it.  It’s different in that way from most human activities.

In order to tell a complete and true war story you have to include the fear and confusion, the unfairness of who lives and who dies, and the mistakes that cost people their lives.  Most people don’t want to hear about that.  They want to hear something soothing so that they don’t have to think too much. That’s where politicians come in.

Many politicians are willing to tell untruths about veterans and war.  They thank us for our service.  This makes me cringe.  I know that everyone reaches different conclusions about their actions, but in my judgement, my time in Vietnam did not provide a service to my country.  I’ve tried in my own way over the years to make up for the shortsightedness of my youth by working for peace with groups like Veterans For Peace.

I don’t want anyone to thank me for being in Vietnam because they don’t know what I did.  Only I know that, and if anyone asks, I’ll try to describe it as honestly as I can.  You probably won’t like what you hear, but the truth about war should be hard, if not impossible to listen to without being moved to work for peace.

Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day.  Armistice Day marked the end of the slaughter of 15 million soldiers and civilians in World War I.  It was also a day set aside to pray for world peace.  There was a recognition that the suffering caused by war descended mainly on the children of the countries where wars were fought.

Veterans Day puts the focus on soldiers.  But an honest accounting would put the focus on all victims of war, especially children.  Children don’t start wars, but they are the ones who lose the most.  They lose their homes and villages, they lose their parents and siblings, they lose their limbs, and they lose their trust in the ability of adults to keep them safe.

Today, many of our younger veterans are hurting.  Words of thanks may help, but jobs, housing, and health care for veterans and their families would help even more.  We should also fulfill our responsibility to the wounded and homeless children of Iraq and Afghanistan.  In fact, if we paid to repair all the human damage that war causes, we wouldn’t have enough money left to fight the next war, and that would be good.

But where can we get the money needed to repair the damage?   Here is a very modest proposal.  Victims of war don’t profit from war, but our weapons makers do.  Why don’t we ask our large weapons-making corporations to turn over their profits from war to a “Returning Soldiers and Children’s Fund”?  Private charity is good, but it can only make a dent in this problem.   Wouldn’t our weapons makers welcome the opportunity to use their war profits to help repair the damage that their products have caused?    ~~~  Bill Distler

I am grateful to Bill for his permission to post his editorial on this blog.  Feel free to thank him publicly with a comment on this site or by contacting him privately at lilyjane910@aol.com or 360-224-3579.

I returned home a few days ago from the 2011 U.S Systemic Constellations Conference in San Francisco, CA.   It was a gift to be with 300 others from across the country, along with a few friends from other countries, to explore the diversity, gifts, and richness of this work in the U.S.

I am grateful for many aspects of this gathering, such as:

• a Healing Circle and Community Constellation for those impacted by the trans-generational stress, historical trauma and the phenomena of ‘American amnesia’ led by Francesca Mason Boring and Malidoma Somé;
• the experience of planning together and co-leading the Integrative Healthcare Panel with gifted colleagues from around the country; and
• meeting new friends such as Jerome Kerner, who combines his work as an architect with constellation influences, looking at the influence of ancestry and culture on home. He is the author of Be It Ever So Humble.

With deep gratitude, I look forward to experiencing how each of us expresses the gifts (as well as challenges) of our ancestries as the constellation work spreads across the globe.

Thanks for remembering with me that we all belong.

I have participated in my local community’s Occupy Bellingham protests the last two Fridays. These weekly gatherings are part of  the Occupy Together gatherings in resonance with Occupy Wall Street protests in NYC.

On Saturday my family and good friends traveled to Seattle to participate in the Global Day of Action. We marched with 3,000 from around the area, ranging from babies in front packs carried by their moms or dads, to elders with gray (or no) hair. A few notable handmade signs included:

“My community police officer pays a higher percent of taxes than General Electric.”

“My mom didn’t work her ass off so that the bank CEOs could be rich.”

“When the poor have no food, they will have no choice but to eat the 1%.”

For me, the Occupy Wall Street movement is not only about economic balance and social justice. It’s about understanding that the birth of the American corporation coincides with the end of chattel slavery in the U.S over 150 years ago.  Wall Street was funded by slavery, and the corporation has become the new plantation.

Many Americans with primarily European lineage have not been able to see this difficult truth. But ask any American with African heritage, and they will affirm: the American and global economy was built on the backs of their enslaved ancestors.

“American slavery was the economic cornerstone on which American wealth and power were built — wealth and power which lasts to this day, as do the psycho-social consequences of American slavery, both for the descendants of the enslaved as well as the descendants of the enslavers.”  (from Randall Robinson, foreword to Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy DeGruy)

Recognizing and reconciling this truth of American history is not easy, but the good news is this: the history we know, the history we don’t know, has been inherited by all of us who are here today. This means we need each other, perhaps more than ever before, to come together in ceremony, in constellation circles, in protests, in prayer, to break bread together, so that together we can look our children and grandchildren in the eyes and assure them that we are the ones who will recognize where there is injustice and imbalance still waiting to be seen — instead of passing the task along to them.

Here’s to freedom and justice for all.

Ten years ago, I began offering a twice monthly introduction to systemic family constellations in my local community.  After the first year, I switched to a once a month circle offering. I love these circles. After leading hundreds of them, I never tire of them.  I write a bit about these offerings in Ancestral Blueprints:

Each of these introductory sessions is both unique and the same.  I never know who or who many people will be there or what life issues will be revealed.  Yet each evening a group of people comes together, many of whom are strangers to one another, and by the end of the evening, there is a silence, a stillness, where pictures of family life, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandparents and grandchildren, reveal how much we have in common.

Each person participates in a movement of giving and receiving in the circle while in resonance with invisible images from their own ancestry that are important for others in the circle.  This same person will see pictures from the heritage of other participants that they also have been missing, imges from the ancestral soul which have been waiting to come into visibility.

The most commonly reported experiences from these circles are feelings of compassion for self, others, and the human experience.  Many also express feelings of relief, reconciliation, understanding, freedom, clarity, and greater belonging.

Here’s to all of us and our relations living freely from our places of belonging in the web of creation, and may the circle be unbroken for all.

I will be returning to Atlanta, Georgia, to lead ancestral blueprint circles this September 22-25, where I’ve been doing so with systemic family constellations since 2005.  Visit Family Constellations West for schedule of offerings.

I find that many with whom I work here in the Pacific Northwest have ancestors with southern roots.  In both regions,  conversations and ancestral circles about often untalked about family histories, like ancestors who enslaved or were enslaved; a mother who dies in childbirth; a grandfather who never came back home from war; an aunt disowned for marrying outside of her tribe; frozen grief over disconnection from European tribes…these are just a few of the images from the family soul that surface during these conversations and circles.

The video of interviews with constellation workshop participants below was filmed by Atlanta-based Adé Anifowose, co-founder of Life Conversations Radio, and co-host of our monthly “Ancestral Blueprints Radio Show”:

With gratitude to and for all of our ancestors,
Lisa

My local community, Bellingham, Washington, is facing whether to allow development of the largest coal terminal in North America for shipping of massive amounts of coal to Asia.

“GPT (Gateway Pacific Terminal) filed papers for the terminal project on 2/28/11 and announced it already had a contract with Peabody Energy to export up to 24 million metric tons of coal per year – half of its planned capacity (making it the largest coal terminal on the continent). ” Source:  Community Wise Bellingham

Here’s what Bill McKibbin, environmentalist, activist, and author has to say about coal in last week’s Cascadia Weekly:

“’Consider,” McKibben observes, “’what has to happen if we’re going to deal with global warming in a real way. Concentrations of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted. The world as a whole must stop burning coal by 2030—and the developed world well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number.’”
While writing Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul, I experienced many “aha” moments. One of the most sobering ones relates to the relationship between our European immigrant ancestors’ profound disconnection from the web and subsequent movement of Americans leading the way toward global warming.  “America has been producing more CO₂ than any other country, and leads the industrialized world in per capita emissions. Even though China now produces as much CO₂ annually, the US still produces many times more carbon per person than China, India, and most other countries. ” Source:  www.350.org

According to  Ancestral Blueprints “Americans have led the way toward climate change out of a context of inherited, severed relationship with indigenous European homelands and extended family networks. The immigrant, colonial experience is the backdrop for today’s disconnetion from the natural world and confusion about our human family’s place within nature’s web.

“I invite Americans from all lineages  to recognize that our ancestral blueprints — not oil reserves or coal — are America’s untapped natural energy resource…As we enter the era of exploration of energy sources invisible to the eye, like wind and solar energy, consider that our ancestors — also invisible to sight, but no less present than sun and air — are sources of guidance and sustenance for America’s soul.”

It’s from disconnection from our ancestors and the web that we got here — and it’s by reconnection that we can wake up from the trance of numbness that says climate change, energy sources, jobs, and other collective  challenges are too big. There is simply no replacement for embodied connection with who and where we come from.

Here’s to us re-membering our place in the web.

It’s been ten days since Osama Bin Laden was killed by an American team of CIA officers and Navy SEALs.  A few days after this historic event, a friend sent me a blog post from Psychology Today, “The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s Death,” written by Pamela Gerloff, Ed.D.

While the article itself was an interesting read, equally so were the range of comments.  Gerloff’s questioning of Americans exuberantly celebrating Bin Laden’s death struck a nerve with many readers, so much so that the author modified her original post to incorporate feedback.

A week after Bin Laden was killed came Mother’s Day.  According to Wikipedia, “Julia Ward Howe was one of the early calls to celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States. Written in 1870, Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe’s feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.”

When I read this Mother’s Day Proclamation, what strikes me the most is that it could have been written last week rather than 150 years ago.

What is my response to Gerloff’s blog post?  “Celebrations over Bin Laden’s death shows us how deeply the bonds of trauma and war run in America’s soul. Wherever there is an experience of injustice, there is a bond — persecutor-persecuted, terrorist-terrorized, murderer-murdered — one doesn’t exist without the other. In all these trauma experiences, bonding occurs, and the drive for the consequences of injustice to be seen is primal.

“There are two images that come to mind when we think of bonding: the first is of babies bonding with their moms; the second is of bondage — where there is enslavement instead of freedom.

“My living prayer is for all of us to listen to the voices of mothers more keenly and to see more clearly the ways in which the inheritance of unhealed war and trauma bonds influence our families and nations.”

“I’m feeling it more and more — that it’s more important to be authentic than it is to be perfect,” said Ade Anifowose.  These are the kind of soulful comments I’m blessed to hear from Ade when we are preparing for our monthly radio show “Life Conversations presents Ancestral Blueprints” on the last Wednesday of the month at 11am PST.

To be authentic in American culture can be no small task, where image is often valued over real.  The trance of pretending and perfection tells us that being authentic is too scary, not pretty or handsome enough, and won’t pay the bills.

When we notice that we are being inauthentic or trying to be perfect, we are often in blind resonance with ancestors or learned ways of coping with unacknowledged truth.  What’s driving our inner experience of life is often in more connection with our ancestral landscapes than what our minds can track.

We have the best chance of living authentically when we are able to acknowledge and honor who and where we come from — trusting that whatever way in which we are in relationship with our ancestral blueprints is its own divine perfection.

I look forward to replying to your comments.

All are welcome.

This week is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War in the United States.  Yesterday’s article on CNN’s Opinion Page, “Civil War”s Dirty Secret about Slavery,” reminds us of how deeply the North’s economy depended on slave-picked cotton.  “The reality is that both North and South were profoundly complicit in slavery,” writes James DeWolf Perry and Katrina Browne from The Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery.

In my Ancestral Blueprints workshops, I often work with descendants of both those who were enslaved and those who enslaved. The images from the family soul are persistent:  the unhealed collective wounds of slavery ask to be acknowledged and honored, and Systemic Family Constellations offer a way to access healing and strength from our ancestors to do so.

“There is a palpable disconnection in America’s soul regarding the profound effect slavery has had so on many aspects of life in the United States.  The human tendency to avoid reconnection with feelings regarding this long chapter in U.S. history is an aspect of trauma’s “freeze” response. This frozenness has kept us from recognizing slavery’s contribution to the American and global economy, and today we all pay the price for ignoring enslaved African Americans’ contributions. These unhealed, unacknowledged collective wounds of slavery’s landscape cuts us off from creating sustainable, just solutions for today’s economy. We deeply need one another to melt these frozen traumas.

“Each of us is affected by the history that has taken place on American Soil, whether our ancestors were enslaved, slave owners, or neither.  The unacknowledged truth of slavery’s place in America’s soul, as well as its’ financial life, has been passed down from one generation to the next…and today’s economic climate resonates with earlier unacknowledged, unhealed images from American history. ” excerpt from Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul by Lisa Iversen.

I was also inspired this week to learn about “Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development” conference sponsored by Harvard and Brown Universities. “This [separation between capitalism and slavery in American History] is, in fact, fiction,”  Sven Beckert, history professor at Harvard.

Here’s to all of us coming together to melt these frozen, inherited images with truth and compassion.

I look forward to replying to your comments. All are welcome.

I’m a fan of anyone who blends truth with humor — for example, Sarah Vowell. Sarah is an American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator and has written five nonfiction books on American history and culture.

Her recent interview with Jon Stewart reminded me of how I felt while writing Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul .  While writing I found myself repeatedly feeling embarrassed about all that I didn’t know about U.S. history.  Then I got it:  amnesia has been woven into our nation’s (and perhaps our human family’s) blueprint since its inception.

From my perspective, acknowledging history and its complexity requires consciousness and wisdom that respects how deeply the human experience is influenced by invisible principles operating in the soul — laws that govern principles of belonging, giving and taking, injustice, and atonement.

Here’s to the following five minute U.S. history lesson with Sarah on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

…and here’s to all of us nurturing wisdom, compassion, and humor during this transformative time in global and American history.

I look forward to replying to your comments.

All are welcome.