Dancing my Dream: Book review and commentary of Warren Petoskey’s practical and poetic memoir

I was very pleased to find Native Americans represented in Read the Spirit’s interfaith and intercultural catalog. Warren Petoskey, an elder of the Waganakising Odawa and Minneconjou Lakotah tribes, was encouraged by friends and colleagues to compile his essays and other writings into a single book, that serves as a combination memoir, collection of spiritual poetry, and social commentary on his experience as both a member of his specific family and as a Native American who has walked in both worlds—contemporary mainstream America and traditional tribal communities—and is still trying to reconcile the interactions of the two in his own life.

What sticks out for me the most about Petoskey’s writing is the lack of victim mentality. I’ve heard so many people talk about “complaining Indians,” and say things like “Why don’t Indians just get over it already?—What’s in the past is in the past.”

What such people don’t realize is many of the injustices Native people speak out about are still very present. Some of the nastiest of Indian assimilation and / or extermination programs weren’t legally abolished until the 1970s—after the Civil Rights Movement. I know people who aren’t much older than me who were abducted from their Native families at very young ages and put in government-run boarding schools for Indian children, with brutal curriculums reminiscent of military boot camp and which carried inhumane penalties for practicing anything Indian—language, prayer, dress, or ways of relating to people.

Once you read Petoskey’s book, it’ll be much easier to understand why many Native people are still quite bitter and mistrusting, but that’s not Petoskey’s focus. Instead, he takes a refreshingly more dignified approach in how he tells the story of his family’s experiences with the Indian boarding school program, alcoholism, domestic violence, and struggling to be Indian when most of the people around them wished they weren’t.

Petoskey explains this situation concisely when describing his great-grandfather, whom the northern Michigan city of Petoskey was named after: “He had to develop the skills to live in one world—a world not of his choosing—while keeping his feet and heart centered in another in order to maintain his sanity. It is no different for us today” (24).

Petoskey’s pure heart and lack of bitterness come through in many quotable passages in his book, especially one from his chapter “Come Follow Me,” in which he describes how he and his wife Barb developed their Christian ministry: “I don’t believe any of these experiences hindered my efforts to fulfill my purpose on this Earth. My path continued to open like a fresh-cut trail—even if sometimes I had no choice but to step off that trail. I believe that what I longed and searched for would be fulfilled as long as I submitted to the Creator’s will” (113).

Much of the injustices Petoskey talks about in his book I knew of already, so I can only imagine how they’ll come across to readers for whom it’s all new information. No doubt, the first question will be, “Why have we never heard about this before?” What

I like about Petoskey’s tale is, he doesn’t feel the need to beat readers over the head with it, or rant about how our schools, government, and news media are full of omissions and lies—He simply states the facts, describes his and his family’s responses to them, and lets readers draw their own conclusions and have their own reactions.

His style is very simple, straightforward, but very deep, mixing straight prose with short chapters of poetry he’s written about his everyday spirituality. He shows that his life has been very hard, and admits without excuse that he himself made many of the mistakes Native people are stereotyped for (alcohol, a period of neglecting his family, and feeling despair and resentment about his situation), but he learned from them and chose to immerse himself in being a traditional Native rather than go into political protest mode.

There are others who have gone that route, and what Petoskey is doing instead is more subtle and possibly more effective. As a Christian minister he teaches Christianity in a way that’s compatible with Native American ways of relating to the Creator, and gives lectures about the Indian boarding school program to help change people’s attitudes through education rather than through adversarial methods.

Petoskey illustrates the value of his approach by giving the example of a psychology test he uses during his lectures about the historical trauma of the Indian boarding school system and its aftermath: He shows a piece of paper with a black dot in the center, then asks people what they see. Most respond with “a black dot,” and Petoskey then asks them “why they didn’t see all the white paper.”

He explains that people “have a tendency to focus on all that is wrong rather than all that is good. By encouraging bad feelings, we are enabling our disconnection from the Source and the Creator’s pronouncement that ‘It is good.’ Feeling bad is the root cause of anxiety, stress, fear, sadness, suspicion, anger and hatred” (124).

Another thing I appreciated about Petoskey’s book was he doesn’t talk about casinos, or devote time to overtly dispelling stereotypes. Through describing his life and spirituality, he demonstrates that not all Indians fit the negative stereotypes, and that Indian ways are still valuable in today’s world. He depicts himself and other Native people doing regular jobs, working hard to support their families in sometimes innovative ways (for a while he fed his family by hunting, which is probably a lot harder to do now than in the ancestors’ time), going to church or practicing their spirituality in more traditional ways, and striving to relate with non-Native people cooperatively rather than oppositionally.

While injustice and oppression naturally are strong themes in his book, Petoskey seems more interested in making the Indian’s case by describing valuable cultural traits he’s learned about Native Americans, particularly his own tribe. He describes the respect that traditional parents treat their children with, some of the rules of community etiquette and hospitality, the value that is placed on the wisdom and experience of Elders, how women are valued and cherished as life-givers rather than motherhood being seen as less prestigious than work men do, and not taking or accumulating more resources than we need.

Petoskey’s book is a beautiful read, especially his poetry. I’ve never been a fan of Western poetry—European and classical American—because the frequent themes of alienation, unrequited love, yearning, and tumultuous and conflicted emotions don’t make satisfying reading for me or stimulate my soul. Warren Petoskey ranks right up there with N. Scott Momaday in how his poetry blends the natural with the spiritual, seeing deep, peaceful emotions and being in nature as ways of feeling close to the Creator.

“Sunset One,” “Sunset Two,” and “Morning Prayer of an Odawa” are the kinds of meditations I like reading in daily devotional books, and I like how the latter depicts Creation like a mated pair: Father God, Mother Earth, rather than one primary force and everything else in a hierarchy below it. This mated pair view isn’t the same thing as polytheism, and I’m sure it will be difficult to reconcile with Christianity for some readers. Petoskey addresses this quandary by stating “Some might say that, as a Christian serving the Lord Jesus Christ, it should not matter whether I have an ethnic identity or not. I have tried to accept that, but still cannot” (114).

Another thing I was happy to see is that he is one of the increasing number of writers—of various backgrounds—writing about is energy, seeing the universe and everything in it as manifestations of constantly-changing energy rather than static material forms. “The Source I originate from is always creating,” Petoskey says. “We all have the ability to summon the power and energy that comes from the Source—or resist it. When we summon the Source-Spirit, we come under its influence and dormant forces come alive. In this relationship, nothing goes wrong” (125).

For people used to linear memoirs, Petoskey’s book will take some getting used to. His narrative jumps around, discussing his life out of chronological order, in a way that demonstrates the Native American view of life as cyclical rather than always progressing in a straight line. If I tried to focus on chronology when reading it, I would have lost the flow, and missed the points Petoskey is making.

Dancing My Dream is good practice for focusing on what’s more important in a memoir than the specific events: the insights and the lessons.

I strongly recommend Dancing My Dream for anyone who would like to see some examples of what contemporary Native Americans are like, and would like the chance to see them defined by positive characteristics rather than those of victimization. At the same time, it’s also a good source of information about the ongoing persecution and marginalization that traps so many Native Americans in victimization, without the more common confrontational or political approaches that alienate a lot of readers.

There are a few places in Petoskey’s book that do sound overly idealized about the past (making it sound two-dimensional and perfect), and almost ethnocentric in one chapter (describing how “no other people” have the hospitality and community ethic, artistic abilities, and emotional depth the Odawa do, when there are plenty of tribal cultures around the world that did or still do). When averaged in with the whole, however, these passages which were mildly offensive to me as someone born into a society other than the Odawa and who knows people as good as them aren’t significant enough to make Petoskey or his work lose any points with me.

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Image: “Archetypal Dreams” by Karla Joy Huber, 2008; Sumi ink, Prismacolor marker, Sharpie marker, metallic silver Sharpie marker, highlighter marker

Using standard communication channels in nonstandard ways: New frontiers in interfaith community-building and networking

The August 2012 meeting of the Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues (MPC) was held at Christ Church Cranbrook, an amazing Episcopalian church built in the 1920s in Bloomfield Hills. The church is on the grounds of the huge Cranbrook Educational Community, a 315-acre major cultural and historical landmark in southeastern Michigan. Established by Detroit News founder George Booth, it was pointed out that Cranbrook was a very apropos choice of venue for a gathering of communicators interested in sharing news and connecting newsworthy events and initiatives with the media.

Of particular note during our guided tour before the meeting’s main discussion was the main church itself, and two smaller chapels on the lower level. The intricacy of the artwork and carvings in the place is amazing, and I felt like I was standing in a historical monument of medieval Europe. Many people don’t realize there are places like this in Michigan, places that look like they’ve been here for a thousand years, when they actually date back only about a hundred or two.

From the perspective of my interest in women’s empowerment, Cranbrook is particularly noteworthy to me for its “women’s window,” a stained glass window at the rear of the main church which features depictions of about 70 women, many rendered from actual photographs, who were considered noteworthy as of the 1920s, such as Florence Nightingale and Jane Austen.

Representatives from various interfaith and intercultural initiatives attended this meeting, and a major theme of all these initiatives is connection—connecting people with each other and with organizations and projects they’d like to support. Our dialogue, as always, also served to educate people about the important positive news that’s routinely left out of the mainstream media.

New ways to visualize interfaith and intercultural relations

An intriguing topic at this meeting was the resurgence of interest in comics, and their growing use in exploring important cultural and religious issues. I never considered the omission of comic strips as having a role in the decline of newspapers. Comics can help convey messages that reading objectively-worded text about might be too uncomfortable for many people, such as about religious difference as a reason for bullying or the growing role of homosexuality in our culture.

Reading about fictitious characters discussing these issues or going on some kind of quest to help resolve them may go farther in helping many people truly empathize with those who face these issues first-hand than reading two-dimensional news accounts about the victimization of such people. Some things are easier to grasp and loosen our ambivalence about when introduced with some artistic subjective storytelling rather than reliance on blunt and so-called objective shock-value approaches.

In response to this resurgence of interest in comics, Read the Spirit (the publishing company co-founded by MPC facilitator David Crumm) will publish its first-ever graphic novel later this year, exploring the topic of adolescent bullying. The book was described as a follow-up to The New Bullying, one of Read the Spirit’s new releases I discussed in my previous entry. Another comics-for-the-greater-good project brought up at the meeting is a series being written by Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin, called Gil Thorp. As a special guest at the meeting, Rubin described how he’s currently working on a comic that explores important socio-cultural issues, which we’ll hear more about at a future meeting.

As I listened to the discussion about comics and graphic novels, I remembered that the Bahá’í Faith published a short graphic novel exploring contemporary application of some of its core social principles, and I think this would be a great method for other religious groups to supplement their standard self-presentation to seekers as well as to people who simply want to know what their religion is and why it’s relevant today.

I also got to thinking about how we’ve been conditioned to think “picture books are for children,” and that this opinion probably had something to do with why people didn’t realize the importance of newspaper comics before it was too late. Holding on to this notion is rather absurd in a world where more and more public signs, menus, etc. have to be printed in pictures because there isn’t enough room for expressing the message in three or more languages. People who are illiterate or who don’t read the language a graphic novel is published in can probably understand the main concepts just by the pictures.

From that perspective, it’s easy to justify the enthusiasm I saw expressed at this meeting about using more visuals in getting peacemaking and reconciliation messages across. The first expressions human beings created of their thoughts and their perceptions of the world were in pictures, so there’s probably some deep and primal value in using more imagery in mass communication, regardless of potential language barriers.

Other new and upcoming releases from Read the Spirit were also announced. One of its specialties is pop culture tie-in books that explore spiritual messages or implications in such diverse works as Ian Flemings’ 007 novels to the Twilight series. Read the Spirit’s Web site includes shorter commentaries on stories ranging from The Hunger Games to Alice in Wonderland.

A few guests at this meeting were authors who recently finished or are currently working on books exploring various spiritual perspectives. Former Detroit Free Press reporter Jack Kresnak is writing the biography of Father William Cunningham, Catholic priest and co-founder of Detroit’s Focus:HOPE, who worked to alleviate poverty in the city through job training and other programs.

Another writer, Nancy Groves, described her new release Facing Illness, Finding Peace, which is what she calls a “life review book.” As a medical social worker, Groves sought to help people who are living with (or dying of) serious chronic illnesses reflect on their experiences through the lens of their lives and their faith rather than through the lens of their diagnosis and treatment. Groves did extensive research on Catholic saints, finding one for each life stage to serve as a sort of patron for the person’s reflection as they write and answer questions in the book. The book can then become a treasured keepsake for the person’s survivors.

Margaret Passenger’s new book is about women in the Bible. Other books have explored the topic of women represented in Christian Scripture, but Passenger has sought to cross denominational and even religious lines, connecting Christians and Jews through the stories of women in the Old and New Testaments. She expressed that she’d like to see the book used in an “interfaith, interdenominational Bible study,” which would “break the box” of the traditional Bible study model.

Another antidote to mainstream media-induced “mean world syndrome” was the work of award-winning television journalist Audrey Sommers, who developed a passion for “more proactive, positive reporting,” after becoming disillusioned with the reactionary and sensationalistic news we’re constantly bombarded with as though that’s the only thing that’s going on in the world right now. Instead of “standing with the gunman at the barricade,” she now seeks to capture “stories of the common man,” and has branched out from that to “the stories of people in the pews.”

She started Stories of Faith, which highlights human interest stories regarding the religious life of inspiring individuals, which can help balance our news coverage to show the full spectrum of human experience in the world today, rather than continue perpetuating the apathy our so-called “informed” public develops as an emotional defense against the despair of seeing bad news constantly over-represented.

New ways faith communities are using social media

Another fascinating new spin on current communication trends is CircleBuilder.com, a “closed-loop version of Facebook,” as it was described by co-founder Howard Brown. CircleBuilder is a social networking tool created primarily for faith communities, to avoid the lack-of-privacy pitfalls of responding to messages on public social media sites. “Many conversations do not belong on Facebook,” Brown explained, so one of the benefits of CircleBuilder is that the moderator controls privacy settings, determines whether events are private or open, and can monitor discussions and activity.

CircleBuilder is already being used by several churches and synagogues to connect their leadership with their congregations, and may attract the interest of other faith communities as well.

Another new tool for connecting people via social media is the Web site Unbucket.com, which is currently in the beta-testing stage and will be online soon. Rather than being a social media page in the sense that CircleBuilder is, or a people-directory, Unbucket connects people around what they want to do, or around an idea, by providing a forum for individuals and groups to post things they would like to do in their lives. (Think “bucket list”). They can then invite others with the same interests or goals to join in.

The site will also feature a page called Unbucket for Good, on which people can post their lists of charitable services they’d like to participate in or contributions they would like to give. Charitable and community-building organizations can then look on the lists and contact potential volunteers or donors.

Expanding the discussion about recent interfaith and intercultural initiatives

In my post about the last meeting, I described the Hospitality Initiative, which focuses on the role of intercultural hospitality in religious and cultural reconciliation, as well as in peacemaking in general. This meeting took that discussion further, and news and introductions from other fascinating initiatives, organizations, and individuals made this proverbial snowball bigger. Some of their efforts are aimed at entire communities, and others are more personal in scale, such as the writing of spiritual reflection books and biographies of local community-building peacemakers.

Three representatives of the Hospitality Initiative were present, and told the group more about the project. As I previously discussed, the idea behind this initiative is religious pluralism rather than religious homogeneity. The difference between the two is that pluralism is about respecting and preserving the unique features of each religion, while acknowledging that the essential core spiritual truths they all have in common enable them to work together to meet the needs of humanity through their cooperative coexistence.

One thing of particular note was that the Initiative isn’t just about building toward a big interreligious summit to be held in southeastern Michigan in 2013. The goal is to hold smaller gatherings as well, to build momentum toward creating a sustainable movement. David Crumm pointed out that while having big annual interreligious events, such as interfaith Thanksgiving celebrations and the World Sabbath for Religious Reconciliation, is important, what’s needed to move peacemaking initiatives forward is dialogue and gatherings throughout the year to bring people together. The first such gathering will be a “Suburban-Urban Unity Picnic” on Belle Isle in Detroit at noon on Sunday, August 5.

Another long-term goal expressed by the Hospitality Initiative is the formation of some kind of institute regarding hospitality, where individuals and groups can meet to educate each other and share ideas and information about projects already underway, as well as allow representatives from each religion a forum for speaking about how they plan to fit into and work to support the movement.

Another guest at this meeting was Len Coombs, representing the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Bentley Library is noteworthy not just because it contains and welcomes acquisitions of any and all records relating to the history of Michigan, but because it is currently looking to expand its collections regarding Michigan’s religious heritage.

Coombs explained that it is “very unusual for a large public institution to collect records on religion in any depth,” and the Library’s archives are already impressively diverse, from mainstream Christian denominations to Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna to Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America.

The Bentley preserves records in their original forms, which means what’s submitted electronically is maintained electronically, and what has been submitted on paper is maintained on paper. It’s good to know that old-fashioned research isn’t a completely lost art, as many people fear it has become in the age of electronic library databases and so many archives and organizations going “paperless.” Anyone can register as a researcher at the library.

The MPC is part of the Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit, so the IFLC always gives an update. The IFLC’s scope is encouraging the interfaith movement in southeastern Michigan. For initiatives and events of broader scope, the IFLC can provide contacts to other organizations that can assist with hosting international guest lecturers, for example.

Two big initiatives the IFLC is currently promoting are literacy and energy self-sufficiency, and it has recently expanded its financial and other resources for helping to meet these needs in the community. There are currently two or three new job openings, including a new COO to handle the increase in funds the IFLC is handling.

Another regular at the MPC is WISDOM, Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit, for which I am now a member of the board of directors. Upcoming event announcements included the third annual A-OK (Acts of Kindness) volunteer event on September 9, and a forum about faith-based bullying on September 13. Check out WISDOM’s Web site for more information about upcoming events hosted and co-sponsored by WISDOM.

Loosely connected with WISDOM is a youth initiative called Face to Faith, which facilitates dialogue among youth who otherwise might have difficulty with or no other forum for asking questions about each other’s faiths. The outcome of Face to Faith’s meetings has always been surprisingly candid while respectful at the same time, with teens asking questions people are often too shy or ambivalent to ask, such as if Muslim women can go swimming (and if so, what do they wear), and about how teens of particular faiths handle not being able to engage in social activities their peers in more mainstream traditions take for granted.

All these efforts the MPC represents, big and small, when added together, will have a synergistic effect on helping southeastern Michigan reach the critical mass needed to help spark a true paradigm shift toward what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Beloved Community.

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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2004; marker, colored pencil, watercolor, metallic gel pen, flower petal

Creating authentic space for spirituality, hospitality, and community-building in business and professional development

The focus of discussion at the June 2012 meeting of the Michigan Professional Communicators with interest in religion and cross-cultural issues was hospitality, and its role in the concept of spiritual evolution.

An interesting research finding that Charles Mabee, who attended as a representative of the Hospitality Initiative, explained is that one of the main reasons a high level of anxiety is a cultural trait in the U.S. is the dissonance between how Americans view themselves and the reality of how they truly act and live. 

Scholar and professor Wayne Baker of the University of Michigan reported that when asked one trait they would characterize themselves with, most Americans polled said “kindness.” It doesn’t take scholarly analysis to see that this is not an accurate description of the “typical” American.

This simultaneous holding of two irreconcilable ideas has dangerously hindered Americans from realizing that what we consider warmly informal hospitality is really quite rude and exclusionary to the rest of the world. Outside the U.S., the model for hospitality is usually to welcome guests, then get to know them. 

Here, we do that in reverse, try to rationally “understand” before we open our hearts or homes to people different than us. This creates a sort of guilty-until-proven-innocent scenario, so that even if we rationally “understand” that, for example, Hindus aren’t polytheistic, or not all Muslims are terrorists, deep down we don’t really accept them because we’ve never extended true hospitality—and thus never opened the door to real friendship—to people unlike ourselves.

The Michigan-based Hospitality Initiative sees hospitality as “the new face of interreligious dialogue,” and seeks to bring it out of the temple, church, and synagogue, and into the home. The formation of this group was inspired by the 1997 Detroit Parliament of World Religions, which some of the key members of the Initiative helped organize. No event of that sort has been held since in southeastern Michigan, and the Initiative plans to revive the event in 2013, with a similar but updated purpose.

The setting of this MPC meeting couldn’t have been more apropos—interreligious hospitality is at the heart of everything the Song and Spirit Institute for Peace in Berkley, Michigan, does. Founded by Brother Al Mascia and Maggid Steve Klaper, Song and Spirit hosts spiritual retreats, interfaith musical performances, seminars by local religious leaders, arts and crafts, health and education outreach for impoverished communities, and more. (To read more about Song and Spirit Institute for Peace, please click here.)

The way the MPC demonstrates its commitment to doing what it talks about in the meetings is through brief presentations by participants about their personal or their organizations’ efforts to for intercultural and interfaith community-building.

One such presenter at this meeting was Lynne Golodner, founder of Your People, LLC, a public relations, marketing consulting, and business development firm. With the philosophy "the way to build a business is by building relationships," Golodner also hosts marketing seminars, writing retreats, and workshops on "Parenting without a Map."

Her work has also taken on an integrational spiritual perspective, with her current focus on the promotion of yoga (and yoga centers) as a tool for helping to increase awareness about spiritual practice being a lifestyle instead of just what people do one day a week in a particular building. 

Books are also an integral part of accomplishing the MPC’s community-building aims. One such book, just published by Read the Spirit Books, was written and produced by Joe Grimm’s journalism students at MSU, about bullying in the twenty-first century. Bullying is getting so much attention now because it infiltrates people’s lives a lot more than it ever could before, through our almost-constant connection to Internet-based media. Increasingly more of this bullying is focused on religion, making this book even more timely.

Read the Spirit also announced its plan to create a team, hopefully involving college students, to produce two small prayer books. One will be for interfaith chaplains, and the other will focus on praying in public. Both are very timely, because of the barriers non-Christian people, particularly recent immigrants, encounter when trying to keep their traditions in a country that historically has mistrusted—and often outright banned—public prayer, and where typically only Christian and sometimes Jewish spiritual guides are available in hospitals, schools, and the military. 

In addition to book publishing, Read the Spirit's Web site is filled with intriguing articles, author of the week interviews, and blogs about interfaith and intercultural topics.

I see what the folks of the MPC are doing and trying to make people aware of, and the amount of work that remains to be done looks overwhelming when taken in as a whole. The simplest way to summarize what I’ve learned about contributing to society outside of a 30-to-50-hour work week is to do what we can, when we can, rather waste that time worrying about what we can’t do right now. 

If we don’t have the time or resources to volunteer or donate regularly, we can at least read about and get to know people and organizations who are doing this work, and learn enough to help us really understand these issues and why it’s important to help promote a more cooperative and safe society for all types of people in everything we do, including in our most mundane daily tasks and encounters. 

That way, if we decide to become more directly involved, we won’t have to start with doing research; we’ll already know who we’d like to work with and what we’d like to do. We’ll be able to just “hit the ground running.” 

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Image: “Welcome of the Trees” by Karla Joy Huber, 2001; colored pencil 

Reflections on being called into the Presence of the Feminine Face of God

I was fascinated to read in Sherry Ruth Anderson’s and Patricia Hopkins’ The Feminine Face of God that a woman being a free agent within her established religion of choice is not uncommon. The authors of this book compiled the stories of many fascinating female spiritual teachers, community advocates, role models, and artists of various types they interviewed all over North America, and the stories of many seemed somehow familiar to me. Some of the names of their interviewees were familiar, such as Maya Angelou and Marion Woodman, but that’s not why their stories rang with such familiarity for me.

What was familiar to me was the questions these women asked themselves—and asked their clergy and mentors—about how they could reconcile keeping or creating their place within traditionally male-dominated religions that revered a male God with their reverence for the more feminine aspects of God.

These are questions I’ve been asking myself for at least a year now. I was starting to wonder if I should again disassociate myself from my official adherence to an established religion because of my misgivings about its default male perspective, and create my own way of private worship that is only mine because I don’t know anyone else who has expressed such beliefs and views outside the realm of what their religions are equipped to accommodate.

I found it interesting in The Feminine Face of God that most of the women whose stories the authors recounted didn’t speak of God as specifically female, and some still even referred to God as “He.” Most of them are Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or adherents of some other traditionally male-dominated religion. Some actually did make the switch from mainstream Christianity to what could be called Goddess worship, complete with ritual and imagery inspired by the ancient Goddess-revering cultures that Riane Eisler and Merlin Stone write about.

What made the authors of this book choose the women they did was that, whether these women operated outside of or within mainstream religions, they somehow demonstrated to their communities a spirituality that goes beyond how God and the spiritual life are described and demonstrated in the Bible, the Torah, the Qur’án, the Bhagavad Gita, and any other monotheistic Scripture. They stood out as demonstrators of the influence of the feminine side (i.e., traits typically associated with the female gender) of God because how they’ve lived their lives and taught others showed that assigning gender to God is irrelevant, and that helping people in need by responding to those people’s specific needs is more empowering than teaching them a particular religion to practice.

At the same time I read The Feminine Face of God, I began reading Virginia Ann Froehle’s Called Into Her Presence: Praying With Feminine Images of God. This book has been invaluable in helping me get back in the habit of praying by helping me become comfortable praying with the imagery (and pronouns) for God I resonate with the most.

One of the many things I like about these two books is that they are about striking a balance between the masculine and the feminine in our spirituality, not simply substituting feminine pronouns and feminine aspects of God for any and all masculine personification of God.

Froehle emphasizes in her introduction that it’s important for people to be comfortable praying with masculine and feminine images of God, so we don’t limit ourselves to trying to understand and connect with God by revering just one set of traits the Creator possesses. She makes it clear that the guided prayer meditations in her book are useful for men and women, and that for some people it may actually be more helpful to view God as male, depending on their needs and experiences.

Another thing that’s helpful is that Froehle, unlike most other authors I’ve read who use female pronouns for the Creator, still uses the name “God,” which likely most of her readers are accustomed to calling the Creator by. She made a wise choice in acknowledging the power of names by carrying over enough frame of reference from people’s old way of doing things for the shift to not feel so abrupt and foreign.

I would have gotten more out of this book if it didn’t focus specifically on recasting Christian scripture rather than taking into account people of other religions with the default male focus, but, again, Christian as the default frame of reference probably works best for most of her readers.

Reading The Feminine Face of God and Called Into Her Presence this year has helped me feel more at peace with breaking my personification of the Creator out of religiously-mandated molds for personifying God. I’ve always had difficulty personifying God at all, making me see things in a more pantheist way, so the more ways I have to make my visualizations more fluid and adaptable, the better.

Conceptualization of God as female instead of male is not the same thing as “Goddess worship,” which is typically thought of—and practiced—as a separate religion in and of itself. As these two books got my mind (and my prayers) working, I realized that worrying about if it was okay or not to pray less with written prayers and more with my own spontaneous conversations with God was getting in the way of my actually praying at all.

One of my biggest sources of struggle has been the fallacies and contradictions surrounding the notion of “selfishness.” Despite my exasperation with such assertions, my distress demonstrated I had internalized on some deep level the notion that I was selfish, lacking in spiritual certitude or strength because I wanted to pray my way, take my time to develop myself first as an individual before getting around to determining what and how much of myself I could give to others.

Add to that being dissatisfied with what religion told me would make me feel connected with God, and my ambivalent interpretation of selflessness, as being like putting on other people’s oxygen masks for them in a depressurized plane before putting on my own, and then dying of suffocation in the process and thus being able to save far fewer people than if I’d taken care of myself first.

I was amazed to read that how I started out looking at and doing things, most of the women Anderson and Hopkins interviewed for The Feminine Face of God had to learn the hard way. They had to first give and give and give until they almost completely used themselves up, then do something really drastic to save themselves. For some, their taking-of-solitude or shift in priorities was emotional rather than physical, while for others it was physical—getting divorced, moving into or out of a convent, spending a few months or a year of separation from their husbands and careers, moving to another state, or living almost completely devoid of human contact for years.

What the authors concluded was that when women take care of themselves, honor their own needs, see themselves and their bodies as naturally sacred rather than minefields for overindulgent temptations, and pray and serve in ways that resonate with them rather than in ways their religions or their parents teach them are best, they are whole, spiritually mature, more able to give and connect through love rather than obligation, and they contribute to society in more meaningful and lasting ways than if their primary motivators include avoidance of shame, of pride, and of divine punishment.

Reading these two books has not put me completely at peace once and for all with the ways my spiritual practice differs from how my religious frame of reference specifies I should do things. But, it is good to finally get confirmation I’m not just a self-serving maverick who is destined to remain a self-serving maverick because I find it so hard to fit into spiritual or social frameworks that seem to work well for so many other people.

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Image: “Water Goddess” by Karla Joy Huber, 2011; Prismacolor marker, Sharpie marker, Sharpie pen, metallic gel pen, white-out marker

My first visit to a mosque, and resulting thoughts about putting Islam in a more accurate cultural perspective

With interfaith groups and out of my own curiosity, I’ve been to various Christian churches, synagogues, Buddhist temples, and pagan drum circles, in addition to having witnessed an Native American wedding and a few traditional pipe ceremonies.

For some reason it’s taken me this long to get around to visiting a mosque, so I was thrilled that the women’s interfaith group WISDOM chose the Islamic Center of America as one of the destinations for its houses of worship tour series.

The Islamic Center of America is the largest mosque in the United States. Located in Dearborn, Michigan, it is ironically placed on a road that was established by Henry Ford for the dual purpose of housing only Christian churches, and serving as a racial barrier.

The road (and its first churches) were established during the time when the metro Detroit area was being carved up along racial lines. Our host gave us this tidbit of fascinating and disgraceful history, but thankfully was able to conclude the story on a positive note. Not only a mosque but churches of ethnic groups and denominations that Ford would probably have rather kept out have sprung up on Altar Road. This diversification has helped pave the way for the diversity now prevalent in what used to be one of the whitest cities in the United States.

Our host was Najah Bazzy, author of The Beauty of Ramadan: A Guide to the Muslim Month of Prayer and Fasting for Muslims and non-Muslims, and long-time attendee of the Islamic Center of America. Unfortunately the tour didn’t include a discussion with the head Imam as the visit’s agenda had indicated, especially after Ms. Bazzy spoke so highly of how progressive he is regarding reconciling Islam to twenty-first century America. In his absence, Ms. Bazzy gave a good introduction to Shi’a Islam and clarified some important misconceptions several guests had.

One of the most important misconceptions she addressed was the confusion of cultural practice with Islamic practice. Anyone who’s ever heard anything about Islam in the mainstream news has probably been disturbed and confused by the horror stories regarding the practice of “Shari’a Law,” which it became evident to us that few outsiders—especially Westerners—really understand.

True Shari’a Law is one thing, and Shari’a Law warped by culture is quite another, Ms. Bazzy pointed out. The same phenomenon can be found in Christianity: Christianity varies so much from culture to culture, I’ve actually heard people describe a gathering of several different denominations of Christians as an interfaith gathering.

As disturbing as that is, what’s perhaps more disturbing is the hypocrisy many people demonstrate when they slam Islam—past and present—for the same traits and tendencies they ignore in Christianity’s history. For example, Islam is often stereotyped as being very oppressive to women—and I can think of at least one denomination of Christianity that has at least as bad a historical reputation.

Whether this reputation of either religion is deserved or not (in some cases it is, in some it isn’t) is irrelevant to this argument. The point I’m making here is, if people are going to slam one, they should slam all who demonstrate the traits they condemn. If they accept such traits in some groups but not in others, then they have no business slamming any of them.

Incidentally, what I’ve observed firsthand about the experience of Muslim women is contrary to the stereotypes. Since long before I heard Ms. Bazzy talk about how women are treated in Islam when Islam is not contaminated by sexist cultural overlays, every Muslim woman I’ve met personally struck me as quite empowered.

The Muslim women of WISDOM are an excellent example of this. Every woman I’ve heard respond to questions about the hijab said she wears it by choice. I’ve also met Muslim women who don’t wear it at all. The Muslim women I know go to school, work outside their homes, strive to empower both themselves and other women, and speak of their husbands as their partners rather than their masters.

Since our most powerful basis for forming our judgments about a group is our personal experiences, then my personal experience shows that Islam is a religion that is no more or less detrimental or empowering to the well-being and progress of the women and men within it than American Christianity, Judaism, or secularism are.

Whether I agree or not with their practices that differ from my own—such as marriage customs, sex segregation during worship within many congregations, and so on—I can appreciate that they are certainly not what the mainstream American news would have us believe about them, which is a very good thing.

The same is true for the much-maligned Christian denomination that came to mind earlier—Catholicism. There are always some people within a group who fit whatever the negative stereotype is, but there are probably more who demonstrate the opposite: that their religion or culture really is and has been useful to society.

Most of the Catholics I know personally are, like the Muslim women I know, quite empowered and useful to society.

I’ve also been intrigued that many of the amazing women I’ve read about in such books as Blessed Are the Peacemakers by Daniel Buttry (which I blogged about a couple entries back) and The Feminine Face of God come from Catholic backgrounds.

Whether they’re doing what they’re doing within the context of the Catholic faith or have since broken with it, it can’t be a coincidence that so many of these women were raised Catholic. This demonstrates to me that there has to be something very good in that religion and its teachings to have enabled it to turn out so many amazing and truly beneficial-to-society women (and men) throughout contemporary history.

The same is true, of course, of Islam.

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Orchid illustration by Karla Joy Huber; Colored pencil, Prismacolor marker, Sharpie marker

Feedback and reflections regarding the documentary film “Miss Representation”

The April 15 screening of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary film “Miss Representation,” held at Detroit Country Day School in Beverley Hills, Michigan, looked like a sold-out show. Hundreds of women (and some men) came to the event, which was sponsored by The Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit’s “Women Lighting the Way” initiative, and supported by many social service and outreach providers, interfaith and diversity organizations, and Jewish temples and businesses. The film was introduced by Rochelle Riley, a Detroit-area commentator on religion, culture, and politics for the Detroit Free Press, and followed up by keynote comments and audience interaction with one of the film’s participants.

The goal of this film is to foster awareness of the disempowering and dangerous stereotypes and violence toward women that are still rampant in our media, politics, and social interactions. “Awareness is the first step toward change,” as the event’s program stated, and this blunt, diverse, and often-disturbing documentary certainly did make the audience very aware that a lot of work remains to be done toward creating a more safe and humane future for and women and girls.

“Miss Representation” does a good job of exposing the fallacies we still have to deal with every day about the status of women in America. Such fallacies include the mistaken belief that “women’s lib” doesn’t need to be discussed anymore, that access to contraceptives is all that women needed to become sexually empowered, and the sexist double-standards of men and boys who embody the worst stereotypes of political and moral conservativism.

The documentary revolves around interviews with many female and male media scholars, politicians, educators, entertainers, and businesspeople, as well as conversations with high-school-age boys and girls about their experiences in a culture with a significant misogynistic streak it tries very hard to deny it still has. Woven around these comments are alarming statistics about how women view themselves in response to how they’re pressured by the media and marketers of so-called beauty products, as well as statistics that point to stagnation in efforts to improve women’s status in recent years—and in some cases, such as the 2010 elections, even setbacks.

The third prominent feature of this documentary is the examples. It features dozens of sexist TV, movie, and news clips. It pays particular attention to the nonfiction examples, such as the off-handed sexist comments from newscasters who are supposed to be reporting and discussing objective news, but sound more like they’re doing podcasts for an all-male audience.

And lastly, no such documentary would be complete without print advertisement examples, such as a hideously creepy Dolce and Gabbana ad I saw before in my mass communication class—again, as an example of media misogyny—that looks like a gang rape scene about to happen. One thing I was surprised not to see in these examples was music videos—and I’m not just talking about gangsta rap and hip-hop, which usually take a disproportionate amount of the blame for their portrayal of women as sexual consumer goods. After all, no one would argue “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” fits into either of those two categories.

“Miss Representation” isn’t just a documentary: It’s a campaign. The event program and the film’s Web site list many practical ways both women and men can help create a safer future for women. Some of these actions include voting women into public office, promoting gender equity at schools, encourage women to become leaders and helping them do so, going to movies written and directed by women, boycotting movies and TV shows that sexually objectify and degrade women, using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the “Miss Representation” campaign and to disseminate positive and empowering messages about women and girls in general, and setting a good example for girls by exhibiting self-respecting behavior.

Following the film was a discussion with one of the film’s participants, Dr. Jackson Katz, a self-described “anti-sexist activist, speaker, author, film-maker,” to quote his Web site. Katz took audience comments and responded with insights from his work in gender equity initiatives. One key point he stressed is that gender equity and media literacy campaigns should focus primarily not on teens and their parents, but on teachers, politicians, and advertisers, whose influence parents can’t control when their children are outside the home.

If you educate these people to change the unhealthy attitudes they pass on to children and teens, the next generations will become gradually more egalitarian—whereas, if you focus on reaching out to children and teens, they may improve their outlook and behavior, but we’ll still have to do that every single time with each new generation, rather than stopping the problem where it starts. This was a refreshing new perspective from the more common two alternatives, which are blaming parents and / or punishing children when they become adults demonstrating the negative lessons they learned in childhood.

There is one thing Katz brought up that I had never thought of—demonstrating that even for people to whom these concepts are not new, there are still things we’ve become so used to that it doesn’t occur to us they are part of the problem. Katz pointed out the problem with the use of passive voice in crime statistics and other reports about teen pregnancy and violence against women. Such reports are usually worded as how many “girls got pregnant,” how many “women were raped,” et cetera—not “how many men got teenage girls pregnant,” or “how many men raped women on college campuses.” The language “takes focus off men,” as Katz put it, and lays all the focus, and the burden, on the victims.

Another disturbing thing about those teen pregnancy statistics that, here again, I never knew, is that over 50% of teen pregnancies are by men. “These aren’t 14-year-old girls getting pregnant by 14-year-old boys; these are 14-year-old girls getting pregnant by 21-year-old men,” Katz said.

This film is very well-researched and well-presented; but, just as with any wake-up-and-do-something campaign, there’s always room for improvement. For many people, the film’s content was new information, and they needed to be shocked into awareness. As someone who was familiar with the severity and scope of the problem to start with, however, I personally feel the presentation could have been more balanced, rather than relying primarily on shock value. Since I grew up spending more time with boys than girls, and my two closest friends right now are men, I can sort of see from both perspectives, and I can see why this film can potentially be less appealing (and consequently less effective) for men than it is for women.

One audience member who spoke during the give-and-take with Jackson Katz pointed out that there were moments in the film that sounded “man-hating,” such as a snide comment by Senator Dianne Feinstein which played to the “stupid man” stereotype. This audience member explained she felt this film was too disrespectful to men in general, and her comments made me think of other examples of such attitude, such as the dozens of cookie-cutter modern sitcoms from the past twenty or thirty years featuring the shrewd “castrating” wife who’s always dissing her “dumb” husband, and having to fix his mistakes while criticizing his masculinity and his lack of intelligence.

Jackson Katz stated that such comments in the film—as well as when such opinions are expressed in person—do not bother him. He doesn’t take offense, but he also admitted that he is a man of influence, who has not been marginalized and who is not member of a minority of any type.

That’s the key right there: Most of the men I know who take offense to such comments and attitudes by women are men from lower economic status or from ethnic groups with historically much lower social standing than Katz. Whenever I talk about women’s empowerment, I thought I always made it clear I’m talking in general, about the society standard, rather than engaging in “man-bashing” with specific targets in mind. At least one of my male friends took it personally, though, and said so, asking me to lay off on the feminism talk. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t agree with the concept of women’s empowerment or my right to point out I have potentially less opportunities and face more social risk than him, but that something about the way I presented my comments offended him.

I’m thinking there are probably more men who respond like my friend did that like Jackson Katz does. It would be irrelevant to judge how justified or informed men’s sense of offense is at such a presentation, because the point is, they are offended, whether we mean to offend or not when we try to be informative about a serious social problem we as women take very personally.

I look forward to the day when we can refine our presentation of these issues such that we don’t need such disturbing exposés or have to preface our personal explanations with such statements as “With the exception of you and my other male friends, most men...” and then go on to say why it’s worse for people who don’t have penises than it is for people who do.

Katz told one audience member, who felt the documentary’s focus was too broad and her concern is her personal challenge, “to figure out what the film doesn’t do” for her, and determine how she’ll present this issue differently to women and men.

I know that’ll be a challenge for me, trying to effectively represent this awareness and desire for change when I’ve been told more than once over the years to “lighten up on the whole feminist thing—It’s offensive to men, and you’ll never get a date if you keep harping on that” (though thankfully not everyone who’s counter-complained about my complaints regarding America’s sexist double-standards has been so rude or dismissive.)

Despite its limitations, this documentary should still be promoted and seen by women and men. The point here is recognition: You can’t help change things if you don’t realize just how bad the problem is. There are still too many people who just don’t realize, or choose to ignore, how bad it is. It’s like diagnosing an illness: The symptoms aren’t as bad (women have made significant gains, and a lot of the sexism and misogyny is not as overt), so we assume the disease is gone; but it’ll slowly grow worse if we ignore it. We need to acknowledge it’s there, name it, and assess its severity, before we can know how to treat it, to heal the injured or diseased parts and make the body of humanity whole again.

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The program for this screening, provided by the Jewish Women’s Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, lists many resources for those inspired by the film to learn more and to take some action, large or small:

“Miss Representation” Web site
Women’s Media Center
Girls Inc
Step Up Women’s Network 
The White House Project
International Museum of Women
Institute for Women’s Policy Research
National Council for Research on Women
Gender Equity Principles Initiative
Common Sense Media
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit

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Image: “Joys in Color” by Karla Joy Huber, 2000; marker, crayon, feathers, flower petal 

Blessed are the Peacemakers: Book review and commentary on Daniel Buttry’s tribute to interfaith peacemakers past and present

I just read another “spiritual road map” book published by Read the Spirit books, by a local author who has been around the world doing the work of an interfaith and intercultural peacemaker.

Reverend Daniel L. Buttry, a Baptist minister from Hamtramck, Michigan, compiled stories of 58 peacemakers from around the world who lived and worked within the last one hundred years, as well as a couple from the 1800s who had a strong influence on contemporary peacemakers. He created a few-page composite biography of each by reading about them and their peace and justice movements, interviewing them when possible, and in some cases, working alongside them.

Blessed are thePeacemakers is not just another collection of bios about inspiring people. One thing that makes it different is many of the people featured are not household names. Buttry said at the June 2011 meeting of the Michigan Professional Communicators that this is one of the reasons he decided to write this book: to finally give a voice to the hard-working advocates, activists, organizers, educators, mediators, artists, and martyrs who’ve been eclipsed by the more-famous people involved in their causes (and in some cases have historically been given credit for their work), as well as those who have simply been ignored by the mainstream media.

Buttry points out that peacemakers by their very nature are not nearly as interested in making headlines or getting credit as they are in the success of their efforts—helping political leaders from warring nations form sustainable peace treaties, mobilizing persecuted local citizens to demand and receive their civil rights, taking down oppressive military-based governments without killing anyone, and in general promoting interest in peaceful conflict resolution instead of justifying violence by calling anyone who doesn’t see things their way “enemies.”

Buttry does an excellent job of describing what a peacemaker is, and what a peacemaker is not. One way he does this is by making clear the differences between peacemakers and peacekeepers, and between these two and pacifists. Another way is by dividing his profiles into several different categories, and starting each with a helpful few-page description of how that type of peacemaking is done.

He then gives a fairly-balanced sampling of peacemakers from around the world, in countries as varied as South Africa, Japan, Germany, Chile, Colombia, Poland, Thailand, and the U.S. They represent the faiths of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, several different denominations of Christianity and Islam, as well as more secular approaches.

Buttry also includes details about their cultural and religious traditions, personality quirks, and limitations that make them unique, which helps readers see them as real human beings rather than saints or people who have never failed. One quote that will always stick with me is by World War II-era journalist Dorothy Day, who responded to admiration she received by saying “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”

These peacemakers have tackled everything from religious freedoms, demilitarization, labor rights, ethnic and racial minority rights, to women’s rights, the overthrow of violent dictatorships, and seminar-type training in specific skills that peacemakers in any of these categories will need. Many of these peacemakers have worked for two or more of these causes, and it’s amazing how many of their stories overlap. American society is so fractured, we’re used to regarding things we think of as rare as isolated occurrences. Buttry shows that the highly-organized peacemaking initiatives that have been done and are being done in the U.S. and other countries are anything but random or isolated.

Buttry’s peacemakers are priests, homemakers, migrant workers, teachers, musicians, politicians, and average citizens who would have remained invisible in society’s masses had they not founded or joined a silent vigil, a peace march, a civil rights campaign, a reconciliation- rather than retaliation-based program for processing war criminals, or a movement to overthrow a dictatorial government. Their results include Masahisa Goi’s Peace Poles (now numbering over 200,000 around the world) bearing the slogan “May Peace Prevail on Earth”, Dorothy Day’s and Jim Wallis’s magazine Sojourners, Stephen Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement in SouthAfrica, Helen Caldicott’s Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (now called Women’s Action for New Directions), Shirin Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, and Leymah Gbowee’s Christian Women’s Peace Initiative (which also includes Muslim members) in Liberia, to name a few.

Some of the profiles are about groups, rather than particular individuals, such as the Women in Black, a silent protest movement started in Israel by Jewish women protesting the abuses by the Israeli military against Palestinians.

Peacemakers aren’t just those who actually participate in or organize protests, political activism, and other direct forms of peaceful resistance. Sometimes peacemaking takes the form of just giving voice to or honoring those who have suffered unspeakable violence. One such commemoration was by concert cellist Vedran Smajlovic in Sarajevo, who in 1992 took his cello to a spot 22 days in a row where 22 people had been killed by a mortar shell while waiting in a line for wartime rations. When people thought he was nuts for going and sitting outside to play his cello in the middle of a war zone, Smajlovic pointed out that bombing a city and killing innocent people was far more insane than his solo musical vigils.

I call BlessedAre the Peacemakers a “spiritual road map” because, like WISDOM’s Friendship &Faith, it introduced me to organizations, establishments, and publications dedicated to peacemaking and fostering power balance within society, that I never would have heard about if I relied on the news as my primary outlet for what’s going on in the world. I was fascinated to read there’s an organization called Men Against Patriarchy, co-founded by George Lakey, a teacher Buttry profiles in his “Trainers and Teachers” section. I was amazed to learn there are grass-roots training institutes—referred to as “folk schools”—around the U.S. which have trained a few generations of peacemakers to participate in nonviolent protests, create sustainable peace initiatives, and cope with the obstacles peacemakers face.

Another thing that makes this book a valuable asset to peace studies is the appendices Buttry included. He lists all of his print and online resources in the back of the book, including the Web site links to the organizations these peacemakers founded or got involved with. Another appendix is titled “Take Action!,” in which Buttry lists “Ideas for Peacemakers,” practical suggestions for realistic small and large steps ordinary people can do to contribute to local, national, or international peacemaking efforts, if his book has inspired them to get more directly involved than by praying or contributing funds.

Buttry’s writing is refreshingly un-sugar-coated, both compassionate and blunt at the same time. The lives of peacemakers are typically touched by horrific violence, and Buttry’s narrative style gives a weird sort of dignity to their suffering—and, perhaps more importantly, puts it in context. Most of what we hear about violence around the world is just the details of the violence itself, the hideous images of people mutilating and massacring other people, without any explanation of why, such as various historical factors that form the catalyst for such explosions of the very worst in human nature.

This has led to the widespread fallacy of “senseless” violence, and each of Buttry’s stories dismantles this fallacy by showing that large-scale violence is almost never senseless: it is structured, backed by solid intent, and, more often than not, institutionalized in some form or another.

Reading books like Blessed Are the Peacemakers instead of just watching and listening to the news can go a long way toward helping people really understand all the shocking and gory stories that make the headlines, and balance them with the sides of those stories they’re not hearing in those shocking headlines. This book can inspire people to develop more media literacy, by helping them filter what they’re seeing and reading in the news into coherent narratives, and recognizing patterns, such as the role patriotism’s strong connection to ethnocentrism always plays in such bloody conflicts, even in nations that consider themselves world role models of democracy and governmental transparency.

I was surprised how many nonviolent resistance movements there have been of people doing very similar things in parallel with each other around the world, many of which directly cite the methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and / or Mahatma Gandhi as their model for how to carry out their causes.

Lastly, this book is a great tool for interfaith relations, showing that people of dozens of different faiths and cultures can be inspired by the same basic peace philosophies, and adapt them appropriately and effectively to their own cultural and religious contexts.

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Illustration by Karla Joy Huber, 2004; marker, colored pencil, watercolor, metallic gel pen, flower petal