This week while sitting in the cafe of Nashville's Frist Museum, this tiny petal from the cherry trees outside floated through the air as someone opened the door. I watched as it twirled its way like a single piece of confetti through the door and into the room before literally landing in my lap.I had arrived at the museum for the 1:00 tour which I learned was actually at 1:30. With time to spare, I sat down to thumb through my journal. On the first page were notes from a prior visit to the Frist when I saw the works of the degenerate artists of Germany. These men and women were labeled by Hitler as degenerates because they were a threat. Their works in my opinion shone with light, the light not often recognized by the masses. As painters of light, they were a threat to a man who was dark and to people easily swayed and afraid.
As I scanned the first few pages of notes, I quickly jotted in the front cover of my journal enumerating thoughts about inner light and experience that surfaced as I read.
1. What lights your inner light?
What do I even mean by this?
2. How do I experience my inner light?
3. Animals hold light.
4. Children - girls - the wounded masculine is killing off a generation of the feminine.
Can the feminine find it in herself to forgive?
5. How do I listen? Be awake and aware - be inside my body and experience
I knew #4 was related to sex trafficking. I didn't know from where the thought came. It showed up and I (usually) stay true to what crosses my internal radar.
Within seconds of making this list, the door opened and the petal floated in.
In that moment I was listening (#5). I gently lifted the petal noticing its veins. It looked like a tiny wing. My first thought was of the feminine and young girls when I saw the pink. I flashed on my pink bedroom from childhood and how in 2009 I began reclaiming pink and the feminine.
Then I thought, 'What was I writing when this petal floated in?' Immediately I made the connection. On the open page before me I saw the uncomfortable thought that came to mind.
"The wounded masculine is killing off a generation of the feminine."
What did I mean by this? Could this be true? What is going on here? What are these men (and women who traffick) doing? If they were really in their bodies, hearts and minds as they sold our children's bodies and raped girls (and boys) could they live with themselves? Surely they would recognize their rage against the feminine. What happened to their inner light causing them to act in such unimaginable ways? Where is their inner light? How is it these young ones, the feminine, can be viewed as disposable? (The average age at which girls are kidnapped or forced into trafficking is 12-14.)
And "Can the feminine find it in herself to forgive?" I am not suggesting forgive and act as if these mind numbing, soul killing actions are okay. But can the feminine forgive and without shaming ask, "What on earth propels you to treat the feminine, our children and even yourselves in this way?!"
It was time for the tour to begin. I quickly posted the photo and a brief note about the above on face book ending with a question "Does the winged petal hold an answer or clue?"
Two hours later I walked to my car. I crossed the street and there piled against the curb were more petals. 'Girls,' I thought, 'thrown to the curb.' Throughout recorded time, hasn't the feminine been thrown to the curb more often than not? The feeling self has been devalued and still is today even in many men and women who ignore their feelings and see feeling as weak.
Then as I sat down in my car I realized just as the petal floated onto my lap, the answer at least partially to the problems of sex trafficking really does lay in my lap, mine and possibly yours.
What if a piece to the puzzle of sex trafficking and how the feminine is treated is in how I relate (or don't relate) to my body, my vagina, my sexual self and my experience of sex. How have I thrown my feminine self to the curb? Do the answers possibly lie in your lap and how you relate to your body and how you experience your sexual self?
Quantum physics has proven what indigenous people have always known. We are interconnected. Long before the Internets world wide web was developed, we were connected through an unseen world wide web. Thus how I relate to my own body, my vagina, my sexual self is connected in the greater web to how you relate or don't, to how traffickers and rapists relate or don't relate. Those of us not involved overtly in sex trafficking are connected covertly through the greater web.
These winged, pink young souls offer their lives. Will we ignore them or will we recognize the beauty of this time? Will we stop this maddening violence each in our own way and treasure the lights of these dear children as well as our own lights? Will we stop for once and for all the disowning of the feminine? Will we stop bullying and labeling vulnerability as weak? Or will we like the masses in Hitler's time close our eyes, not see the light?
Just as the door opened at the cafe this week, a door has opened in this time, a door to healing our sexual selves and the web of shame and trauma over many lives and lifetimes.
Just as I gently lifted the petal, I am challenged to gently lift the story lines of my own life up for healing?
Does the pink winged petal hold a clue to my healing, to our healing in these times?
I believe so.
-Dawn, The Good News Muse 12 April 2013
* On May 23-25, Nashville will host the "Third Annual Trafficking in American Conference." Click HERE for info.
** End Slavery TN hosted by Nashville's Trevecca University is increasingly active in TN. Find out more about them at www.endslaverytn.org and on facebook at End Slavery Tennessee.
*** Purchase the 2011 documentary "Nefarious: Merchants of Soul" at this site for $20. Host a viewing party.
***** According to the FBI, sex trafficking is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world. Here in TN, 78 of our 95 counties have reported sex trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of American youth are recruited into prostitution through kidnappings, through
deceptive agreements between parents and traffickers and pressure in other ways. Once these
children become involved in prostitution, they often are forced to
travel far from their homes and, as a result, are isolated from their
friends and family. The lifestyle of such youths revolves around violence, forced drug
use, and constant threats. Criminal networks transport these children around the United
States by a variety of means—cars, buses, vans, trucks, or planes—and
often provide them counterfeit identification to use in the event of
arrest. The average age at which girls first become victims of
prostitution is 12 to 14. It is not only the girls on the streets who
are affected; boys and transgender youth enter into prostitution between
the ages of 11 and 13 on average. Today, the business of human sex trafficking
is much more organized and violent. These women and young girls are
sold to traffickers, locked up in rooms or brothels for weeks or months,
drugged, terrorized, and raped repeatedly. These continual
abuses make it easier for the traffickers to control their victims. The
captives are so afraid and intimidated that they rarely speak out
against their traffickers, even when faced with an opportunity to
escape.
Traffickers represent every social, ethnic, and racial group. Traffickers are not only men—women run many established
rings.
Traffickers
use force, drugs, emotional tactics, and financial methods to control
their victims.
In some situations, the youths have become
addicted to drugs. The traffickers simply can use their ability to
supply them with drugs as a means of control.
Traffickers often take their victims' identity
forms, including birth certificates, passports, and drivers' licenses.
In these cases, even if youths do leave they would have no ability to
support themselves and often will return to the trafficker.
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