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"Mythology is the mother of religions and grandmother of history.  Mythology is humanmade by the artists, storytellers, entertainers of the times; in short, culture-makers are the soldiers of history, more effective than guns and bombers.  Revolutions are really won in the cultural battlefields."  [Zsuzanna Budapest: The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries]
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Graves of two Serb victims in Kosovo, Pec Monastery.
Mileva Sevic (cross on the right) was raped and killed by Albanians
although she was mentaly retarded.
Serbian Orthodox Monastery at Decani in Kosovo
Also see: http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9903/north.htm

NOTE -- 23 June 2002:  My Kosovo pages began with an e-mail I received Good Friday, 2 April 1999 from Judith Brownlee, a professional psychic in Denver, Colorado:

Dear Dr. Jenks,

I found your delightful site, Mythinglinks, through AOL NETFIND.  I am trying to compose a Peace Invocation for the Kosovo situation, and I am looking for the Pagan Goddess and God of that area.  Can you suggest the appropriate names?  Or can you direct me to where I can find them?
Thank you very much.

Judith Brownlee

[Note: for the wise, profound "Peace Invocation" that Judith eventually wrote a week later,  which we posted on Myth*ing Links for Orthodox Easter, 11 April 1999, see http://www.mythinglinks.org/kosovoserb~invocation.html.  Patriarchy's proven itself so poisonously bankrupt.  Other ways, others stories, must be released into the collective unconscious.  Judith's work is one way.]

In responding, Judith and I, and later another friend, "Anon.," and I, opened a dialogue connected with wars in general and Kosovo in particular (for the full correspondence, see Kosovo Part II).

For this Crone Papers page, I am adding several new illustrations and, with minimal revisions, weaving together only my own crone-ish contributions and thoughts on a wide range of related issues......

Good Friday, 8pm, 2 April 1999

Dear Judith --

Since your request touches on a matter close to my heart, I just spent a few hours searching the web for Serb and Kosovar myth and/or folklore and came up with nothing specific.  If you have access to Sir George Frazer's Golden Bough (unabridged version -- in 13 volumes, I think), you might find "pagan" rituals specific to these regions, but I don't have these volumes myself & so can't check out such rituals (I borrowed all of them from a university library when I was doing my dissertation, but I've long since returned them & they're very costly to buy on one's own).

I should point out that both warring groups are very patriarchal.  Orthodox Serbs and Moslems are alike in dominating their women.  Thus, even if I could find myths specific to each group, I don't think they'd be what you're looking for.

So, I'd suggest focusing on the land.  The land, so drenched in sorrow and blood, is where the real power lies. Awaken the spirits of the land, not for avenging, but for protecting the tormented humans on both sides who currently occupy that land.  Awaken the spirits of the land and ask them to help shift the toxic stories that have been fueling this whole tragedy for some 600 years now.

The Balkans are part of what Marija Gimbutas called "Old Europe" -- and if you have any of her books, you can get a better sense of the ancient (nameless) deities of that land.  They are deities of streams, wells, storms, forests, trees, flowers, mountains, green fields, grains, fire, fertility, and, above all, birds and snakes.

The American artist, Sandra Stanton, has extraordinary images of three such goddesses on her website (two of them include ancient art from the region).  Go to her page starting with the "P's" and scroll down to Samovila, Tabiti & Vila of the Forest.  Here's the URL: http://www.goddessmyths.com/Pele-Yemaya.html

Tabiti

Artist Sandra Stanton writes:

Tabiti was the Scythian Goddess who ruled the realm of animals and fire. The early Eastern Europeans swore their allegiance to her as part of the earth that witnesses everything. She was part of Eastern European culture before the Scythian nomads arrived, at first represented by a Goddess bearing a child and later, adopted by the Scythians, as half serpent with a raven on one side and a canine on the other. Background figure is a Paleolithic Goddess from Dolní Vestonice, Czech Republic, c. 20,000 BCE; on the right is a Neolithic Goddess "Ladybird", late Vinca, c. 3500 BCE, near Belgrade, Yugoslavia; on the left is a Goddess with a siren, canines and lions, 5th century BCE, Kherson mound, Ukraine; gold headdress after one found at Chertomlyk, 4th century BCE; bottom layer after a diadem from Kelermes, 6th century BCE; earring from Olbia, 5th century BCE; torque from Chertomlyk, 4th century BCE.

If I were writing an Invocation, I'd invoke all those ancient ones, the ones with names (like the above), and the ones too ancient for their names to have survived.  I'd ask them to help the current inhabitants find a deeper, more ancient way in which every life form is seen as a part of the whole, a vast web of precious life.  Violence erupts only when we forget that interconnectedness.  (Have you seen the Norwegian film, in Sami [w/English subtitles: Blockbuster often carries it], called The Pathfinder? -- it shows this interconnectedness in a very graphic way.  It's a film about medieval circumpolar peoples, not Balkan peoples, yet I believe that in ancient times, peoples who understood the land shared a sense of this interconnectedness, no matter where they lived.)

Late on Wednesday (pre-dawn Thursday), the first night of Passover, at 4am I took burning sage out into the little street in front of my apartment and sent the holy smoke towards the Balkans, sending peace and sanity and compassion.  I think that to use such "simple" things as sage, fire, prayer, water (sprinkled upwards to the skies and downwards to the earth) creates great power.  It invokes "Angels of Life," not the biblical "Angels of Death" (who were sent to slay Egypt's firstborn while at the same time "passing over" the blood-marked doorposts of the enslaved Hebrew refugees).

...continuing, Holy Saturday morning....

As I see it, in addition to finding safe haven for the Kosovars, the hearts of all those ethnically mixed peoples need healing.  There are such dangerously toxic stories lodged in those hearts!, and now a huge weight of new traumas that in a few decades might swing the pendulum the other way and result in new horrors against the current victors.

If there were an outbreak of some hideous, deadly new bacteria or virus in the region, the international community would immediately quarantine the area and send in "hazmat" teams of medical experts dressed in puncture-proof spaceage suits with tons of sophisticated, experimental medical supplies.  Well, there's now an outbreak of hideous, deadly new stories and "myths" in the region.  People discount stories and myths ---- yet two world wars started because of them, and the seeds for a third are sprouting before our eyes.  So send in "hazmat" teams of storytellers, depth psychologists, folklorists, mythologists, street-theatre people, etc, etc --- i.e., who can listen to the stories, but then find wise means of shifting them, layering in new insights, "re-magicking" reality for both sides.  It's a quixotic hope, I know, but I put it out there anyway.

The Kosovo Battle was a turning point in the medieval history of Europe. It was not only a battle fought between a Christian alliance led by the Serbian Prince and the army of Sultan Murad but also an event which has marked the centuries of subsequent history of this part of the Balkans.  Kosovo has remained an area of conflict between two civilizations, two religions and mentalities.  Serbian Orthodox Monastery at Decani in Kosovo

 
What I found most haunting is that the "fuel" for the current crisis between Christian Serbs and Moslem Albanians lies in 1389, 602 years ago, on a battlefield known as the "Field of Black Birds" in Kosovo [Note: my emphasis on this story isn't meant to "demonize" the Serbs.  See further below....].  That's where many Serbs were slain by Turkish Moslems.  It wasn't clearcut, however.  Some Serbs fought alongside the Moslems *against* other Serbs.  And some local Moslems fought alongside the Serbs *against* other Moslems.  But the "myth" doesn't recognize those shades of grey.  In the "myth," cruel Moslem Turks defeated the flower of Serbian malehood on the Field of BlackBirds.  Old Serbian folksongs celebrate the event to this day & there's even a Serbian film about it. (No one link tells the full story -- you have to piece it together.)

Milosovec took power exactly 600 years later (1989) and rallied his people around that toxic, still-simmering, 600 year old story.  The actual birds aren't really what most westerners would think of as "blackbirds," by the way -- they have an orangey breast and resemble robins more than spooky (to some people) blackbirds.

So, if I were creating a Peace Invocation, I'd invoke the ancient Bird Goddess, especially in her manifestation as those springtime "robins."  I'd ask her to create a miracle that would swirl away the old, bloodied, poisonous story and bring forth a new story, one of healing, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of the peoples with the land.

I'd also invoke the Virgin Mary (Orthodox Christians like the Serbs have great devotion to her) who was appearing a few years ago in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, warning of dire consequences.  (I haven't kept up with this story but I believe she stopped appearing a few years ago.  You might want to do a websearch to get specifics -- I'd do it myself but am out of time today.)  And if I were writing the invocation, I'd also do a websearch on Fatima, the daughter of the prophet Mohammed -- I don't know much about her so I'd want to get a sense of who she was and what she stood for.  If tradition shows her as caring and compassionate, then I'd invoke her help too, woman to woman. If tradition shows her as stern and warlike, like a Moslem Athena, I'd leave her out of my invocation.

Since tomorrow's Easter, I'd pull out all the stops and simply ask for a miracle.  Why not!  Go for broke! What do we have to lose?  Why *couldn't* the Virgin Mary who appeared in Medjugorje, Fatima, Lourdes, Cairo, etc, etc appear in Kosovo or Belgrade tomorrow?!! She's always warning about gloomy disasters & asking for more prayers -- and of course no one listens to such tiresome requests except the pious with their rosaries.  But if only she could change her strategy, ask for improved stories (instead of boring, rote prayers), & appear right in the midst of the disaster, with media cameras rolling!  That would get people's attention!  As humans evolve in changing circumstances, so too, I think, our "Holy Ones" should take note and develop new tactics for helping humanity.  The old ways are so bankrupt and "stuck."

Well, Judith, enough.  I hope you'll send me your Peace Invocation when it's written -- and tell me how it'll be used....

With warmest blessings,

Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.

Vila of the Forest

Slavic Goddess, a guardian of the forest animals and plants, Vila was a shape-shifter and might be a swan, horse, snake, falcon or whirlwind. Born on a day of misty rain, she was a winged Goddess whose dress shimmered in the dappled light of the deep forest where she lived. She had a profound knowledge of herbal healing and protected the purity of streams. If anyone brought harm to her creatures, she would cause great harm to them in turn; perhaps they would be caught in an avalanche or even danced to death.

                                                                                                    -Sandra Stanton Easter Sunday, 4 April 1999:

Just came across these two links in my files:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/8933/bov.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/8933/index.html: [great opening Slava image here]

The second site is from Frater Gwydion, a Serb pagan living in Yugoslavia (and using a pagan Celtic name!) -- on the home page is a lovely graphic depicting the Bird Goddess! -- exactly the "mythic vibration" I directed you to.  (I think the double headed bird on the Yugoslavian flag must be HER! -- the flag's black colors against the red and yellow look so warlike that I never connected that bird w/a goddess, but now that I see a more tamed-down, artistic version, I can see the connection.)  Now we have a name for the bird goddess, the Goddess Slava, who holds all the other deities under her wings.  On the first site (which I found by following a link on the second), the Book of Veles offers more data on her, including a lovely verbal descriptian.  (FYI: Serbs are Slavs, thus the Russian context for some of the data.)

23 June 2002 -- NOTE:  In creating this page, besides Judith, I shared the early stages with a friend, "Anon.," whose background is deeply tied to Eastern Europe.  My essay below answers her concerns (while at the same time integrating some of her replies where appropriate).  She asked:

Is it possible, therefore, to be a bit less biased against the field of blackbirds story (ie: not calling it toxic?) -- all the patriarchal stories are equally toxic and it seems like the Serbs have been demonized enough by the western media and that doesn't need to be added to.  The media are fueling the crisis by whipping up emotions against Serbs to justify bombing them.  There have been problems in Kosovo for centuries and one side does one thing and the other side does something worse and on and on and on.  The western patriarchy is as responsible as Serbian patriarchy and Albanian patriarchy.  I am trying for balance.   All 3 are causing this disaster and, as always, it is the women and children, the Goddess's creatures and Mother Earth who suffer most from all this.... As I said before, I don't side with anyone in this, all the war-makers share equal guilt in this catastrophe.

I think what bothered me was the statement that the story of the field of blackbirds is the fuel for the current crisis.  True, it has been the rallying point for Serb nationalism but it is just one of the factors fueling the catastrophe - there are so many.  All the patriarchies have their nationalist stories.  Patriarchy tries to make one side right and the other wrong, when it is patriarchy itself that is wrong.

I replied between 11-13 April 1999:

By emphasizing the 600 year old Serbian defeat on the Field of Blackbirds, it was definitely not my intention to further "demonize" the Serbs & I didn't realize that it was coming across that way -- that's the problem with writing e-mails swiftly, at white-hot intensity, & assuming that they're coming across clearly to others.  If I sent a mixed signal to you, I probably sent it to others as well.  So let me slow down here....

Ten years ago when the ethnic Albanians held power, it was they who abused the Serb minority and the powder keg was lit in late June 1989 when an old Serbian man complained to Milosevic, who was visiting the Field of Blackbirds, about being beaten by the Kosovars.  Milosevic fired up the crowd by proclaiming that such a thing should never be allowed to happen again.  That was June 28, 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Serbian defeat on the Field of Blackbirds on June 28, 1389.

On June 28, 1914, the 525th anniversary of that same defeat, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serb in Sarajevo.  That set off World War I.  You make excellent points when you write:

...Among other contributing factors was the harsh treatment of Serbs by the Austro-Hungarian empire....I agree that all these stories are toxic, but they wouldn't play such a big role if other circumstances weren't coming into play.  There are so many stories and anniversaries  here about the colonies breaking away from England and battles, etc etc, but we have yet to declare war against England again on any of those days.  Power hungry politicians use stories to manipulate a situation.  Most sensible people wouldn't even listen to them or take them that way if there weren't other things going on....

I agree that these three events are very complex: thus, an economist might explain such events by looking at whatever economic factors prevailed in 1389, 1914 and again in 1989.  A politician might look at similarities in political problems.  But I'm a mythologist, by training and temperament -- and so I look at "story."  The "stories" of June 28, 1989, and June 28, 1914, clearly point to June 28, 1389 as the origination point for these conflicts. These dates can't be a coincidence.  Without ruling out other crucial factors, a powerful, and from my perspective, "toxic" story fueled these events.  As the UNESCO charter states,

Since Wars Begin
In the Minds of Men,
It is in the Minds of Men
That we Have to Erect
The Ramparts of Peace

 -- what quickens the seeds of war in those minds are savage *stories.*  By stopping such toxic stories, we might have a good chance of stopping the carnage.  I think of *Beowulf* -- endless conflicts are fueled and renewed at great "peacemaking" feasts between victors and vanquished when the vanquished old men secretly tell their young men stories of great swords belonging to their forebears, but stolen from those forebears by the ruthless victors.  "See that guy wearing that sword there," they say, "see that ass who parades around with it as if it's his prized trophy?  Well, that sword belonged to your great-uncle, and let me tell you how he was betrayed by that asshole when that guy was a young punk."  This pumps up the young men and soon they're butchering the victors to get back the "sacred" weapons of their forebears.

By focusing on this Serb story, this doesn't mean that I'm demonizing them -- I might as well demonize the Turks, whose invasion of Europe led to that Field of Blackbirds defeat in 1389.  But before we can demonize the Turks, we'd have to look at *their* stories and economies and politics, and see who or what was driving *them*, and then demonize *those* villains.  But then we'd have to look still further back to see who was driving the Turks' villains, and then the villains of the villains.  We'd wind up in an "infinite regress."

Thus, demonizing is a bankrupt strategy. It solves nothing.  It just keeps the whole thing going, pointlessly, round and round and round.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me return to "story."

You speak so well of the toxicity of *all* patriarchal stories, and object to my singling out the Serbian defeat on the Field of Blackbirds because that seems to demonize the Serbs, who are, after all, only one among many of the patriarchal forces mixed up in this tragedy.  Yet the toxicity of continually nurturing that Field of Blackbirds narrative seems to me to be less about patriarchy than ethnicity.  It's true that patriarachy fosters such ethnic divisiveness, but rather than pushing all evils back onto patriarchy, I think it's more useful (at least for me) to differentiate between toxic ethnic stories, toxic hero stories, toxic economic stories, toxic child-rearing stories, and so forth.  Some of these stories really do seem to be more "toxic" (in the sense of being more likely to contain the self-perpetuating seeds of war) than others.

As a mythologist, I feel it's crucial to identify such stories.  Maybe this isn't helpful.  But it's what I do, and always with the hope that such stories will then enter the collective *consciousness,* instead of remaining *un*conscious and thereby all the more dangerous.

   At some point, yes, these toxic issues are all interconnected, but I find it too overwhelming to think in such terms.  When I go that route, I just want to sink into a deep depression, which just feeds more of the negativity.  So, instead, I scurry around like a busy little squirrel saying "Look at this, look at that! We have some nuts going rancid here, so take time to look at them, time to gather some fresh ones that won't be so hard to digest. The liver can't digest rancid nuts, you know, so we need to protect our livers.  Quickly now, quickly, quickly, toss out those old wormy, germy things!"

Some can soar overhead and see the bigger picture and make others more aware of possible meta-strategies for changing things.  I seem better suited to handling ground-level details like foregrounding new stories/nuts/myths/narratives and backgrounding old ones.  I look more at mini-strategies, layer by layer.  It's a difference in how we focus our lenses, but it doesn't change the reality of what we're viewing.

I think of my approach as a "Scheherezade Mission" -- i.e., a murderous, brutal sultan, the epitome of patriarchal power, is held at bay, not by guns and bombs, but by the human ability to weave such wonderful stories that his whole being slowly shifts into alignment with an energy that nurtures life instead of destroying it.  (Of course, I have to admit that on an individual level [i.e., not looking at patriarchy as a whole] maybe sometimes it's better to get La Femme Nikita to just assassinate the sonovabitch!)

We have a Peace Corps which does amazing work. But what about a Storytelling/Listening Corps?  We've seen from 2 World Wars that a story, handed down through the generations, can literally become the womb of war.  As a species, surely we're creative enough to spin tales that can birth peace instead!  Peace is so often made to seem dull and lame -- but that's part of the problem.  Peace, the real thing, is highly robust, energetic, exciting; true peace knows how to nurture intensely creative (and satisfying) work as well as play.  Why don't more playwrights and screenwriters tap into these deeper dimensions instead of making peace seem so sappy and naive?

The Serbs have nurtured a 600 year old toxic story...and look what happens.  The ethnic Albanians must also have old, toxic tales and, when they had the chance, they abused the Serbs.  Why weren't Serbian & ethnic Albanian mythologists, educators, artists, street theatre people, depth psychologists, and the like, working to shift the parameters of that story into something less "charged"?  (I'm sure many were, in fact, but such work, the most important of all!, is given such a low priority in all our societies.)

Right now a flood of new poisonous tales are sweeping through that region.  Eventually things will be settled along political and economic lines and the world will turn its attention elsewhere.  But a million traumas will remain behind to fester into a new dangerous toxicity that may come of age in another 20 or 30 years when it's likely to be the ethnic Albanians, not the Serbs, who are committing atrocities.  Each side demonizes the other.  And so it goes.  As you say so eloquently, all sides share the blame here.

What concerns me, deep down, is that whatever compromise is finally worked out, no one will tend to the *stories* -- and so we/they will be incubating future horrors all over again, and be just as shocked and disgusted then as we are now, and never understand our own complicity in ignoring the sheer bloody power and weight of what seems so flimsy: story, myth, a handful of rotten, rancid nuts.

James Hillman and others speak about how myths and archetypes choose *us,* not we them -- thus, we're lived by myths.  They sweep us along at a frantic pace if we can't be aware enough to stop and say, "Whoa! -- what 'story' is trying to live me?!"  When the myths are disjunct (i.e., toxic), they inspire us to new horrors.  People claim we live in a mythless society; they mourn the absence of myths and envy indigenous cultures where myths are still kept alive.  The problem with myth, of course, is that it "lives" one so thoroughly that one can't see it!  We do have a myth in the West: apocalypse.  We seem hellbent on actualizing it.  As you point out so well, rather than focusing on the relatively small example of the Field of Blackbirds, "perhaps the Book of Revelations would make a more universal example."

I honestly don't think it's too late yet.  As a species, we're so amazingly creative and full of hope and laughter.  They say we only use 10% of our brains -- think what mirculous stories are lying untapped in the other 90%!!  Time to get to work, time to inspire a few million Scheherezades (both male and female) who *know* how to go into those "thin places," as the Celts call them, and bring forth the magic.

And time to pray and pray and pray and clean up our own acts.

I think a lot these days about a powerful little essay Simone Weil wrote during WWII.  It's called "The Illiad, or the Poem of Force."  She defines "force" as that quantity-x that has the power to turn a human being into a "thing."  She places that "force" at the center of western civilization.  Instead of writing about Nazis and Allies, she used the Trojan War as her focus.  One day the Greeks would possess "force" and foolishly think it was theirs for ever.  So they'd abuse the other side.  But "force" can't be possessed -- it swings from side to side, so the next day the Trojans would have it, and think *they'd* have it forever, and so they'd demonize the other side and turn them into "things."  A "thing" with a soul.

In a chilling and haunting passage, Weil distinguishes between force "in its grossest and most summary form," which is to say, when it actually kills, and force which, in stopping short of killing, becomes even more pervasive and "violent" [which is what's happening to peoples on both sides of the Serb/Kosovo conflict]:

... How much more varied in its processes, how much more surprising in its effects is the other force, the force that does *not* kill, i.e., that does not kill just yet.  It will surely kill, it will possibly kill, or perhaps it merely hangs, poised and ready, over the head of the creature it *can* kill, at any moment, which is to say at every moment.  In whatever aspect, its effect is the same: it turns a man into a stone.  From its first property (the ability to turn a human being into a thing by the simple method of killing him) flows another, quite prodigious too in its own way, the ability to turn a human being into a thing while he is still alive.  He is alive; he has a soul; and yet -- he is a thing.  An extraordinary entity this -- a thing that has a soul. And as for the soul, what an extraordinary house it finds itself in!  Who can say what it costs it, moment by moment, to accommodate itself to this residence, how much writhing and bending, folding and pleating are required of it?  It was not made to live inside a thing; if it does so, under pressure of necessity, there is not a single element of its nature to which violence is not done.

In the tension between those with power and the "things" engendered by this "x", this "force", this disjunction, there is created a zone in which rage festers and finally erupts either in self-injury or in increasingly impersonal, non-discriminating bursts of violence directed toward turning the once-powerful into victims.  Weil shows that just as the roles of victor and victim alternated daily during the Trojan War, so too the victors in any age, believing they possess *force* forever and thereby overstepping its limits, are eventually reduced to "things" through the inexorable workings of force-driven fate.  The fuel for force is, thus, self-perpetuating.  The only way to stop it, Weil concludes, is if people "learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate."

That's the key ---  "...learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate."

To bring that about, the stories must be changed.  How?  I can't say, at least not in specific terms.  I think the answers lie in the unused 90% -- those areas of immense creativity and compassion.  It'll require a great capacity to listen, and then a willingness on both sides to create new stories that will nurture life, not hate.

Can it be done?  Yes -- we're such a subtle, mercurial, magical species.  Techniques, both ancient and modern, exist to summon forth the best within us.

*Will* it be done?  Realistically, probably not.  Unfortunately, the apocalyptic vision is way too strong in the West.  It's been building, after all, for 2000 years.  The "collective" seems to yearn for such a drama, such an ultimate "good vs evil" disaster in which all personal responsibility will be negated as larger forces duke it out.  Our media continually shows us such conflicts. It's perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We "expect" it.  Some even perversely speak of the "rapture" which is to precede it.

So, realistically, things look dismal.  I'm not a realist, however, and fortunately many others aren't either. So I still have much hope.  Maybe the Virgin Mary will still put in an appearance.  (If she doesn't, because she has a better "gig" on some other planet, or whatever, she'll be on my shit-list for all eternity.)  Maybe something else will happen, but we'll squeak by.

Who's to say if the West's bombing is directed by patriarchal forces, or by *Kali,* protective, fierce Kali, who's sick of seeing innocents on all sides suffering.  I'm a pacifist and I see no logic in using war to create a path towards peace.  Yet Kali does use such a strategy as her "skillful means."  NATO's no Kali, but under all the left-brain, and/or sentimental rationales, what if Kali secretly pulls the strings?  What if...?

I'm not wise enough to see the larger picture.  I'm just a busy squirrel, doing quality-control on our supply of nuts.  But if the Virgin Mary is otherwise occupied, maybe Kali is pinch-hitting and has some larger plan of her own which, hopefully, doesn't involve an apocalypse.  Yes, I know this is called the Kali-Age in the East, the darkest and saddest of all the ages.  But even *that* concept is born of an overly dramatic patriarchal POV.  Maybe Kali, or Durga, has a quite different strategy in mind.  Maybe she too wants some new stories, some kinder ones.

I think of my favorite saying:

Divine Wisdom is opening ways where, to human sense, there are no ways.

May it be so.......

18 April 1999, 2am --
Final comments:

ABC's Nightline for Wednesday, 14 April 1999 contained a report from an independent journalist in Kosovo.  This journalist had followed the desperate flight of the family of an ethnic Albanian man, his wife, little son, and extended family.  At the end, in interviewing the man and his wife, I was struck by the wife's ancient, classic beauty as she quietly let her husband field all the questions.

Then the interviewer addressed her directly and asked if she could ever forgive the Serbs for what they had done to her family and her village.  The woman's serene beauty vanished and she became a raging Fury. "Never!"  she cried, her face contorted with her passion for revenge.  The next shot showed the woman with her young son.  The journalist commented with simple eloquence upon the obvious fact that this mother would transmit her rage and fury to this boy.

A few days earlier a column appeared by Cokie and Steven V. Roberts for United Feature Syndicate.  The most striking passages are these::

CENTURIES-OLD CURSE CONTINUES TO PLAGUE THE BALKANS

Some years ago when we were living in Athens, we visited a town near Greece's northern border with Macedonia. It was a national holiday, and a proud mother had dressed her small boy in a traditional costume for the occasion. As they waited for a photographer to take his picture, the mother said softly, "My little warrior, you will grow up and kill all the Turks."

This is the curse of the Balkans: mothers whispering into the ears of their children, nursing grudges, spreading poison, plotting revenge. No matter how long it takes....

... The leaders and troops on the other side will [also] have the curse of the Balkans ringing in their ears as they go into battle. Their mothers planted it there a long time ago....

And so it will continue, generation after generation, unless/until we find a way to defuse and re-focus these stories..........

 
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