Visceral Learning with Goddesses: Chandra (#19)
I don’t usually publish my blog on Sundays. Theoretically at least, I try to pull myself away from the rabbit hole of open tabs and projects on my laptop. I love the concept of Tech Shabbat! I try to read actual books, go outside to the forest or the ocean, or just chill in a hammock. I love to do a creative project, spend time with people I care about. Oh, and dance. Throw in some yoga or meditation, the drinking of strong dark roast coffee, and a nap, and you are looking at my ideal Sunday.
When I was a kid, my parents sent me to church every Sunday, but — get this! I could go to any church I wanted. I think they liked to sleep in and read newspapers, so I would tag along with my church-going friends. My favorite religions were the Unitarians, because they had a zipline and a tire swing, the Church of the Nazarene, because we studied maps of the world in Sunday school, and the Catholics, because Mass was very early so I’d often get to sleepover with my best friend, Ellen.
My mother is an atheist and my father, who is dead now and knows the answer to the mystery, was agnostic. He was raised on a farm and my grandparents were devout Methodists. I remember going to Christmas Eve candlelight services with them, and my cousin Jeff being Joseph in the nativity play. When my grandpa was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I also remember my grandma (so small and fragile in her age, she reminded me of her favorite cat, Floating Feather), I remember her saying, “well, it must be God’s will.”
This was in Iowa. In 1991, when I was a senior at the University of Iowa, there was a mass shooting. I was in a lockdown in the EPB for several hours while the shooter tracked down and killed four faculty members and a student.
I donated my Christmas money that year to a fund for one of the survivors, a 23-year old student who was paralyzed from the neck down, and I remember at Christmas that year feeling just very sad and angry. Was this, too, “God’s will?” for a young woman to be paralyzed? Was it God’s will for children in Africa to be starving, for gay men to be dying, far away in the big cities, of a still-mysterious disease? Was it not obvious that my grandfatherʻs cancer was caused by the toxic pesticides he sprayed, walking through waist-level fields of corn and soybeans?
Yes, I was very angry when I was 20. And I didn’t even know anything about climate change yet. (I marvel to recall that, in addition to not learning about climate change in college at all, there was NO internet or email. I wrote papers on a Mac II and tracked down books in the stacks.)
I so happened, this week, to receive Conversations with God: Book 2, from the public library. (A group called Cosmic People will let you download it here.) Because of Covid, you have to order a book, then make an appointment to pick it up from a gloved, masked, librarian. It’s quite thrilling, actually. Strangely enough, I thought I had ordered Book 1 of this classic trilogy of New Age spirituality. I must say I had a little shiver when the book began:
“Everything happens in perfect order, and the arrival of this book in your life is no exception.”
The author, Neale Donald Walsch, says of the book, “It is a message from God, and in it god suggests a social, sexual, educational, political, economic, and theological revolution on this planet the likes of which we have never seen, and seldom imagined.” That’s on page 1.
Walch describes his writing as a Q&A dictation with God/Goddess/All that Is. This entity, through Walsh, says that there is a “group consciousness” and that “Individuals and smaller groups must affect larger groups — and ultimately, the largest group of all, which is ALL humankind — for there to be permanent and significant change on your planet” (p. 51). In the book, God also says this:
“It is not your young people who are destroying the rain forests. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are depleting your ozone layer. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are exploiting the poor in sweat shops all over the world. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are taxing you to death, then using the money for war and machines of war. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are ignoring the problems of the weak and the downtrodden, letting hundreds of people die of starvation every day on a planet with more than enough food to feed everybody. They are asking you to stop it. It is not your young people who are engaging in the politics of deception and manipulations. They are asking you to stop it.”
When the cries and pleas of young people to change the world are not heard and never heeded; when they see that their cause is lost — that you will have it your way no matter what — young people, who are not stupid, will do the next best thing. If they can’t beat you, they will join you.
I know that I was this young person, and I bet that you were too. Resistant to join the mainstream, that’s why most of the faculty I know got into this gig. We all want to “make a difference” but at some point, we become complicit. That’s why Greta Thunberg started her school strike, and I think that the changing role of educators begins from that inflection point.
These memories and thoughts about God’s will and the purpose of education got me thinking about Religion as an academic discipline. I reached out a popular professor of religion at Community College of the Pacific, but he didn’t think he had much to say for the Teaching Climate Change study, so he referred me to Chandra (a pseudonym) who teaches courses like Comparative World Religions, Ancient Religions, World Mythology, and (clearly her favorite) a class on the World’s Goddesses.” Chandra also didn’t think she had much to say about climate change, but she was willing to help out. Not much turned out to be a lot.
Chandra came to Hawaiʻi when she was 26 on a one-way ticket. She ended up working in the tourist industry, but quickly got sick of its fakeness and went for an AA degree in Hawaiian Studies. She took Hawaiian language classes and became interested in Laʻau Lapaʻau, a plant-based Hawaiian healing modality. “I discovered that a lot of the healing modalities were directly connected to Hawaiian religion, and I also was blessed to be able to read some sacred stories about Hawaiian goddesses which piqued my interest in other goddesses aroundthe world.” So she finished the AA in Hawaiian Studies, a BA and MA in Religion in six years, in order to get to know the world’s goddesses (and meet the MQs to teach as a lecturer). She has a clear love for the Hawaiian goddesses, and specializes in polytheistic religions, but we also talked about Daoism, Buddhism, the Bible, and the Koran.
“A lot of these mythologies are explanations for environmental phenomena. For example, in Mesopotamian myths, mankind was created and then they got out of hand. The myths say ʻthey got too noisy’…so the gods destroyed them and brought a big flood. You see this in a few mythologies, you know, hubris, humans can become disrespectful to their environment and the environment is the embodiment of the deities, so when you violate those deities there can be repurcussions.”
A devout practitioner may say that what we are experiencing now is very upset higher powers.
Aware that my secular research bias and my line of questioning creates blind spots in my thinking, I asked Chandra, “do you think that, if we prayed, and made offerings to the land, it would help with climate change?”
She mentioned the recently instituted Lāhui Kānaka a kapu instituted recently by respected kumu hula for three anahulu, or ten-day periods. According to a kumu hula on Maui, “A kapu is a code of behavior to maintain balance – how we should or should not act. It is based on our relationship to our Akua, our ʻĀina and our fellow kanaka. This kapu mauliola has do’s as well as don’t’s” (Maui News Now).
The do’s include “eating healthy foods, praying daily, thinking of the well being of others, letting the ʻāina rest by not impacting it adversely.” The don’t’s, as Hawaiʻi enters a two-week lockdown to flatten surging coronavirus cases in the islands, include not gathering, not touching your face, and not forgetting to wear a mask.
Chandra said that the kapu is an example of cultural leadership that is “not only honoring scientific guidance, but they’re also praying every day at noon, and noon is considered a sacred time in Hawaiian religion. It’s about honoring forces beyond one’s control and recognizing and cherishing them. From a polytheistic view, I think this applies to ancient religions as well.”
So, yes, I think that could affect the collective world view of climate change.
She went on to explain that:
“The thing that becomes tricky is that, in our society, climate change is approached from a scientific perspective, not from a spiritual perspective. But it is connected with sprituality, you know. And there’s some slippery slopes too. Like with the goddess Pele, for instance, where there’s geothermal drilling. That’s supposed to help climate change and yet that is not okay from a Hawaiian religious perpective because it’s actually seen as drilling into the goddess and sucking out her mana, sucking out her life-force.”
Windmills on agricultural land.
Telescopes on sacred mountains.
Birds, bats, bees, native species of all kinds that are endangered, extinct.
With a sinking feeling I realized that culpability that I pondered earlier. The University (all Universities) perpetuate this spirituality/science split, teaching about climate change “only” in some areas and not in others. By NOT talking about climate change explicitly in religion courses, something IS being taught about our planetary predicament.
Chandra mentioned Buddhism and Daoism as nature-oriented religious philosophies. They teach that “if you can become one with nature itself, the wind and the land and the bamboo, then things will go smoothly, but when you fight against that that’s when you have obstacles on multiple levels: mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, psychologically.”
I thought it must be cool to have conversations like this with young people. She said, “I’m grateful to be teaching right now, particularly the goddess course which is having profound effects on young women. It’s fun to hear their reactions afterwards and how empowering it is. I don’t use the word ‘empowerment’ anywhere in that class, but that’s the most common response I get at the end of the class.”
I mean, Goddesses manifest AS nature. In indigenous cultures, this plant IS a god.
As we neared the end of our conversation I asked what the University (all universities) could learn from her experience about teaching climate change.
“I loved my experience in Hawaiian studies and I’m not Hawaiian. I’m not indigenous. But having that portal and learning how to be a bridge… I had the immense pleasure to be able to study under so many amazing kumus with Ph.D’s. Maybe it’s more prevalent on the mainland, but I find it discouraging that there’s this discounting of indigenous knowledge, like it isn’t as reputable as scientific knowledge, and I call bullshit on that because what I experienced in Hawaiian Studies was not just impacting my mind — it impacted my entire body!
“I FELT the learning on a visceral level. It was incredibly hands on. I carved a poi pounder and poi board. I created sacred drinking cups out of a coconut. I farmed sacred plants. I tasted them. I had them put in my eyes!… It was not just about me learning through standard modalities. That’s the portal towards connecting with the environment. To me, my profound connection with the environment is experiential. It’s not what I learned about what’s being destroyed or saved through a newsfeed on social media, it’s about me physically going out and experiencing it, and I think that is the bridge that needs to happen in higher education.
“I didn’t get that in the Religion degree, and you would think that Religion would be like that. But I was more viscerally connected, spiritually connected through my Hawaiian Studies experience than I was getting a Master’s degree in religion.”
Chandra cited an educational maxim or olelo noʻeau, Ma ka hana ka ‘ike – which in this context means, learning from doing. We might call this something like applied learning or kinesthetic learning, or embodied learning, or even, connected consciousness.
“The more we can get into our bodies to really learn, I think we’ll create a more holistic person, a more holistic student, and that would ultimately lead to a more holistic earth.”
