December 25th, 2005
Paula Gunn Allen on serenity
“In the United States, where milk and honey cost little enough, where private serenity is prized above all things by the wealthy, privileged, and well-washed, where tension, intensity, passion, and the concomitant loss of self-possession are detested, the idea that your attitudes and behaviors vis-a-vis your body are your politics and your spirituality may seem strange. Moreover, when I suggest that passion–whether it be emotional, muscular, sexual or intellectual–IS spirituality, the idea might seem even stranger. In the United States of the privileged, going to ashrams and centers to meditate on how to be in one’s immediate experience, on how to be successful at serenity when the entire planet is overwrought, tense, far indeed from serene, the idea that connected spirituality consists in accepting overwroughtness, tension, yes, and violence, may seem not only strange but downright dangerous. The patriarchs have long taught the Western peoples that violence is sin, that tension is the opposite of spiritual life, that the overwrought are denied enlightenment. But we must remember that those who preached and taught serenity and peacefulness were teaching the oppressed how to act–docile slaves who deeply accept their place and do not recognize that in their anguish lies also their redemption, their liberation, are not likely to disturb the tranquility of the ruling class. Members of the ruling class are, of course, utterly tranquil. Why not? As long as those upon whose labor and pain their serenity rests don’t upset the apple cart, as long as they can make the rules for human behavior–in its inner as well as its outer dimensions–they can be tranquil indeed and can focus their attention on reaching nirvanic bliss, transcendence, or divine peace and love.”
–Paula Gunn Allen, “The Woman I Love Is a Planet; The Planet I Love Is a Tree” in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism
