Quotations from Returning To My Mother's House
General:
"[This book] is the story of both men and women who have abandoned their inner lives, leaving behind their hearts where deep dark feeling reside; putting aside their intuitive imagination where dreams flourish; ignoring the invisible worlds where the irrational and the mysterious offer their incomparable gifts; and disowning the realms of silence, simplicity, and solitude where the interior matures."
— From the Prologue
"Neither men nor women can become whole people until we have healed and balanced both the masculine and feminine aspects within us."
— p.120
"In witnessing these varied stories from all over the world I came to understand that the conscious feminine embraced all choices. It honored women who stayed home with their children, women who raised children and worked, and women like me who chose not to have children and were mothering in nontraditional ways. Intrinsic to the very nature of the feminine was a spacious womb that had room for diversity on all levels: lifestyle, politics, faith, and ethnicity. The core essence of female wisdom was its nonhierarchical respect for diversity and complexity, reversing the simplistic dominant world view of right and wrong, black and white, powerful and not powerful. My sisters around the globe had placed that wisdom at the very center of my being, making it the heartbeat of my existence."
— p.172
"Finally, I see so clearly how a place inside you that hurts can turn into a passion that heals."
— p.196
"Praying with my students, I was never more convinced that our chance for world peace lies with ordinary people of different faith traditions, cultures, races, and genders coming together face to face. Facing one another we become bigger than any one of us, big enough to hold both our differences and our longing for global cooperation. And our delicate hope is held in the strong arms of this synthesis of individual differences and universal longing. I am certain that these are the strong arms of the Great Mother and that the highest way we can honor her is by facing whatever 'other' exists inside us or in the world around us."
— p.211
"The busier I was the less I had time to feel. Though I would soon give up all drugs, my addiction to busyness as the most potent way to close off the heart would poison me for decades to come. The split between my inner life and my outer life wedged itself deep into my core. My masculine was on overdrive and my feminine was buried alive."
— p.82
"I've finally decided that with any choice we both gain and lose."
— p.169
Group Affirmation:
"I choose to water the small flower of hope."
— p.214
On Mother:
"Mom taught us that mistakes and creativity were close sisters who loved each other's company."
— p.9
"When the maternal influence in a family, a community, or a culture dies, the interior compass is gone and most of our life energy turns outward."
— p.103
"Lying in bed and musing about our family, I thought about the radically different responses my brother and sister had offered me when I asked for them to email me their overall impressions of our mother in order to help me write this book. Jimmy remembered Mom as the happiest person he had ever met, and most of Joanie's memories were of our mother's anger, both toward her and life in general. Like most siblings, we reflected different aspects of our mother; Jimmy held her joy, Joanie carried her anger, and I adopted Mom's sadness and heartbreak. Each of these reflections was an equally true part of our mother."
— p.230
On Women's Groups:
"...reclaiming the conscious feminine is partly a solitary journey, but some phases can only be traveled with the support of community. I would find that support among a strong network of feminist friends, and this was one of the most significant differences between my mother's generation and mine. It is a difference I pray the next generation of women will not take for granted."
— p.35
On Gail Straub:
"When I was born, I was hopelessly allergic to my mother's milk. Just minutes after my birth, I spat out the essential nourishment of the feminine. Formula and cow's milk were tried to no avail, and finally I accepted goat's milk, to my parents' enormous relief."
— p.99
"My spiritual inclinations unfolded like a baby boomer Rorschach: hippie, feminist, social activist, Buddhist, and finally Buddhist Christian."
— p.23
"I have led my life as a global citizen with a voracious cultural appetite."
— p.28
"'I am a messenger who has been sent on a long journey to declare that there is hope in the world.'"
— p.189
(Gail Straub quoting Maud Morgan quoting Isak Dinesen)
"[I am trying] to prove it is possible to live and grow old as an unbound flame."
— p.7
"I try to listen as if I am hearing each person's story as the very first story I have ever heard, as if the blueprint for their healing is contained in the very story they are telling. And if I listen carefully enough I can find the exact question that will open the door into their imagination. 'True listening is worship,' said Heidegger."
— p.220
On Africa:
The Bedouin Women of the Sahara:
"Regal beyond description, the Tuareg women stood over six feet tall. Gliding across the desert with their long robes and flowing folds, great turbans of white, black, and indigo blue, they seemed to float just above the sand as if they were mirages. In every regard the women nomads were equal to the men, unheard of in most of Africa. They controlled all mediums of magic and medicine, and used intricate herbal formulas for birth control. Trance dancing was common, and the men were thought to be much more susceptible to evil spirits. Only the Tuareg women were capable of driving away the demons. The sisters were also masters of poetry and music."
— p.70
"While in Africa I fell in love with teaching and took the first steps toward my life's work. My mentor was Nora Hodges, a legend in the Peace Corps."
— p.63
On Russia:
From a Workshop in Moscow:
"We all began to feel the strength that comes from careful listening and the incomparable medicine that comes from telling the truth and having it witnessed."
— p.155
On Ireland:
"Ever since that day in the Cashel Mountains, I have returned to my love of the Mother Mary, praying the rosary daily and very often when I walk. Whenever I want or need to pray I immediately turn to Mary."
— p.177
"Beannacht" after John O'Donohue:
"[In Ireland] I met a druid priest named John O'Donohue who helped me be at home with my eclectic sense of the sacred. Some years later John would be booted out of the Catholic Church because his views were too radical, too real, and too empowering. Unlike my mother, John did not spend an inordinate amount of his life petitioning the Church or trying to be accepted back into the fold in order to please a God whose narrow rules strangle the spirit out of you. Rather, he became a poet and writer, a scholar who helped thousands of people in many corners of the globe to celebrate the infinite faces of the divine. Here, my dear mother, I offer you John's example as my beannacht to you."
— p.179
(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfvS2LYbZLQ)
On the U.S.A.:
"...it was in West Africa where I faced the fact that my own country was made up of equal parts light and shadow. I would never again view America as the benign center of the universe, but rather as a country with positive and negative aspects that needed to coexist as part of a much larger global community."
— p.65
Copyright ©2008 by Gail Straub. Excerpted with permission from the book, Returning to My Mother's House, by Gail Straub, published by High Point Press, ISBN 978-0-9630327-5-1. Please request permission before duplicating or distributing this material.
