Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America's Soul

“One might argue the historian is the conscience of the nation, if honesty and consistency are factors that nurture the conscience.”

– John Hope Franklin

In a few days I will be traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I’m doing so to participate in the Third Annual Reconciliation in America Symposium sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation.  This conference takes place May 30 – June 1, 2012.  It was created in honor of John Hope Franklin and his lifelong efforts to promote healing in the aftermath of the Tulsa Race Riots in the 1920′s.

I feel honored to be presenting the workshop, “Reconciliation in America’s Ancestral Blueprints with Systemic Family Constellations” at this symposium, where keynote speaker is Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi.

To learn more about John Hope Franklin and this symposium, visit: “The Politics of Reconciliation:  A National Symposium and Dialogue Among Those Working to Bridge Societal Divides.”

Here’s more about the Tulsa Race Riots:

“The Tulsa Race Riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the wealthiest African-American community in the United States, the Greenwood District also known as ‘The Negro Wall St‘ was burned to the ground…The events of the riot were omitted from local and state history…aerial fire bombing of black residential neighborhoods was reported. During the 16 hours of the assault, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, more than 6,000 Greenwood residents were arrested and detained at three local facilities.An estimated 10,000 were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 36, but other estimates of black fatalities have been up to about 300.

“The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place…In 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report, completed in 2001, to establish the historical record. It has approved some compensatory actions, such as scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park, dedicated in 2010, to the victims in Tulsa.”   Source: Wikipedia: Tulsa Race Riots.

“We need to do everything possible to emphasize the positive qualities that all of us have, qualities which we have never utilized to the fullest, but which we must utilize if we are to solve the problem of the color line in the twenty-first century.”

– John Hope Franklin, The Color Line

Comments, questions, and prayers are all welcome. With gratitude for all, Lisa

The following April of 2011 post is being re-posted in honor of

Black History Month.

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.

Some drawn to the Family Matters: Learning Program with Lisa & Systemic Family Constellations in 2012 learning program are already facilitating or integrating Systemic Family Constellations (SFC) into their worklives, others have experienced this approach enough to know that the next step is studying with a seasoned teacher, perhaps without yet knowing what or how it would look to integrate it into their worklives. Allowing the space of “not knowing” is an essential, though sometimes uncomfortable, place. How it is that one lives with this place is highly informative, both personally and if you are interested in integrating SFC into your worklife.

Discernment of one’s relationship with the “not knowing” place is one of the learnings offered in this program. When is “not knowing” the right place to be in, in one’s life, or when facilitating a constellation, a kind of “hollow bone” place to be as a vessel for truth to be revealed? When is “not knowing” a kind of denial of what one does know, an alliance with truth unseen or secrets, or a way of resistance to claiming one’s gifts or knowledge — which is sometimes entangled with ancestors who were not free to express their own knowingness?

This yearlong program is a place for you to come into right relationship with these different kinds of “not knowing” with the intention that you will see yourself and others more clearly, including how SFC fits into your personal and work life.  To learn more, visit Family Constellations West.

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.”