Wild Wisdom in Times of Suffering

In this episode Kim Carfore navigates themes of suffering, notions of wildness as a theological concept, affirming the importance of fostering reslience in dark times. She reflects on spiritual decline, and the decline of the moral imagination, while confirming the importance of tending to wisdom traditions.

Citations

Wild Women and Just Water: A Ronning Center Conversation with Dr. Kimberly Carfore and Dr. Christiana Zenner

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (man's search...lol...this book was written in 1946 I think we can give him a break)

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome to Return to the Fire with Wild Women. I'm your host, Kim Carfor, and today I'm going to be talking solo. I'm going to be talking about suffering. And there's a heaviness that a lot of people are experiencing. We are in difficult times, and I want to speak to that because I feel like it's always just beneath the surface. And uh just to live and survive, we're expected to put on a happy face and just repress our feelings, our emotions. And some of that which is tuned into reality. And as someone who is aligned uh with truth and truth-telling and committed to this, I feel that it's only natural and responsible to speak to it. And so a question that I get, or maybe that I think myself, is okay, so wild women, are you talking to adventurous women, or why are we talking about healing and theology? How are those two dimensions connected? Well, for me, wildness is a theological concept, and I go over this in my dissertation, which I'm currently developing into a book form. So at some point I will be ready to uh talk about that. And I do reflect on it a little bit in a talk that I recently gave at the University of Alberta called Wild Women in Just Water with uh the one and only Dr. Christiana Zenner. So check it out online. You can find it on Vimeo if you Google it. But wildness as a theological concept. And so in wildness, there's that third space that we exist in, right? That liminality. And so also a space of liminality is the space of suffering, right? It's in between this world and the other world. And so theology is offers frameworks to understand truth claims, to understand suffering, to understand morals, to under give meaning to life, both life and death, and the cycle of life and death, and ask big questions like what are we doing here on this planet? What are who are we? Right? What does it mean to be a planetary being? And so a lot of the perspectives that have been represented have been through uh Christianity. But in Hinduism, uh there, well, there is a wild woman figure, definitely Kali. Uh, but in terms of not a goddess figure, but yuga, so time frames. Uh, some people say, some philosophers, some Hindu philosophers say that we are currently in the Kali Yuga. And so the Kali Yuga is defined as the Hindu age of darkness, right? And so these are giant timescales. This is where cosmology uh ties in. That it's not just, you know, human lifetimes that we're reflecting on. No, a yuga is some say 2,000, 2, 2, 400 years, and some say that this one lasts over 400,000 years. So it depends on the scholar that you're asking. But these are giant time skills. And so what the Kali Yuga is defined as is a time of spiritual decline, uh, strife and ignorance. And so you see this a lot, right? Uh, even in my current profession of uh being a professor, a lot of the humanities are being cut right now, right? Because the rise of AI, the focus on science as the one and only definer of truth or the most important definer of truth, uh, right? Those are the uh well-funded programs, and so the humanities which are in charge of maintaining a sense of morals and meaning, right? The meaning-making professions, or the ones that question meaning making and whose meaning gets to matter. So those are being cut, right? So that I think that has something to do with this uh spiritual ignorance, spiritual decline, or it's a reflective of that in society. I'm sure you have many other examples that you can think of uh in your own life or that you see in the news. And so uh there's a Vedic text uh that talks about the learned scholar at this age, in the dark age, is characterized by a cynical twist, right? So anyone clever at juggling words or debating semantics is revered. And so you can see this in our postmodern relativistic moment, and with Donald Trump claiming that um uh fake fake news, right? And so so we're living in this moral relativism, this time of moral decline. And in this uh Kali Yuga, the quote unquote learned scholar, wisdom or those wisdom keepers and those who maintain virtue tend to be ignored. And so that is definitely true in our current moment, right? Wisdom takes time, it's slow, it is developed based upon experience, and we live in a time where there's tons of knowledge, tons of information. We're being bogged down. I'd feel that every day that I open my emails, my five email accounts, so apologies if I haven't gotten back to you. That there's just tons of information, right? But wisdom, which is developed in the body, in relationships, in long timescales, uh it's not as I would call not as sexy or not as uh captivating to our attention as this sort of um juggling of words or semantics. And so that's part and parcel to the development of this moral and spiritual decline. And so as I continue my work, I appreciate your patience uh in my the development uh with with as someone who is careful with their words and careful with being public about certain things. Um I think it's an important part of wisdom keeping and the maintenance of wisdom. I often think about this spiritual metaphor of some truths or some experiences in life, you have them and you sit with them, and it takes decades to develop the words to define the experience. And so some people use the metaphor of an oven, right? That when you put together eggs and milk and flour and sugar, it takes time, right? You have the the heat has to activate the eggs, which then integrate with the flour and the sugar to create the cake that it takes, you know, 45 minutes for that to be in the oven, and it needs to be sitting in that heat. Uh that's alchemy. And so being quick to speaking truth claims without sitting with them produces noise, but not necessarily wisdom. And so to use, to go back to wild women and living in dark times and sitting with suffering, one framework that is used in the Christian tradition is apocalypse, right? So the book of apocalypse, it's also reflecting on end times. And so there is a figure in there, uh, the the woman in the wilderness and the woman of the apocalypse. And so sitting with these wisdom traditions, right, these old stories that have maintained us and that drive us or that perpetuate us or we participate with is part of the cultivation of wisdom and wisdom keeping. So going back to suffering, some other figures that I sit with and I think with in these sitting in these dark times, I am, I don't know if I would say I'm inspired by the work of uh Albert Camus, so an existential philosopher, but I sit with the myth of Sisyphus. And so some of you definitely know this myth, and some of you may not. And so this man's task on earth is to push a rock up a mountain, and that's what he was damned to do, right? So that's his only task. And so it's easy to imagine, sure, his life is full of suffering, and it is, right? His brow is sweaty, it's difficult work, it's exhausting, it's boring. What's the meaning? What's the point in life if all you're doing your whole life is pushing a giant boulder up a mountain? But then there's that classic phrase from Camus that we must imagine Sisyphus happy. And so I don't think that Sisyphus would be full of glee and joy as he's pushing this rock up the mountain, but I imagine that he has this smirk, so uh an inner knowing, a tiny little glimmer of knowing that there is meaning and purpose and beauty in this one monotonous task, right? It's not overwhelmed with joy or ebullient with laughter. It's a subtleness, a subtle, subtle happiness that comes with not an epiphany, but a sitting with wisdom in wisdom traditions. I also think a lot with uh Victor Frankel and so his book Man's Search for Meaning. So in this book, it's his memoir, and yes, these are two men, but I do think that we can gain a lot of insight into the lives and the suffering of people because these are humans ultimately. And so his memoir is in a Nazi concentration camp, right? So he was in a Nazi concentration camp, and he develops psychotherapeutic theory, and his main insight is that the primary human drive is to search for meaning. And so I think in this search for meaning, it can create a tremendous amount of suffering. And I think about people going through midlife crises, right? I think part of the suffering is that one has the time and has lived a life long enough to where you realize, oh wow, I've chosen my path and I've made choices and they have consequences, and I can't go back on some of these, whether that's a career, an investment, um, having a child or children or a family, the person you marry. And so you foresee the future as set, and in that, possibilities close, and and that kind of joyful ebulliance of childhood when there are endless possibilities begins to close or be more deterministic. I think for some people who tap into this meaning-making as uh the search for meaning, it can feel like suffering as as possibilities end. But in that restriction, there's also that little glimmer of joy and hope or or or added meaning because I think of that Bride Eye song, too many options can kill a man. And so while too many options can overwhelm and kill people or kill the spirit, too few options can obviously do that. But there's that in-between space and tapping into that inner knowing and that that wisdom, spark of wisdom that is in those in-between spaces or in those restricted spaces. And so for Viktor Frankel, he asserts that the will to meaning is key to survival, right? So it's that will and willpower. And that's something I talk a lot about in women in the wilderness or wild women uh excursions is I don't expect people to have camping or backpacking experience, but developing or tapping into that will is part of the method. And learning to feel into one's body, one's intuition, and one's inner sense of agency, tapping into that glimmer, that spark can allow it to grow and we can start feeding that dimension of ourselves. And so, in that process, in that work is the development of spiritual resilience. So, resilience is one of my favorite words. I think we need more of it in this world and in our times. Um, resilience and grit, grit is probably my favorite word, uh, but resilience isn't a given, right? It's not a one and done, like, cool, I went on that backpacking trip, or I ran that marathon when I was, you know, 20 years old. Therefore, I have resilience. No, it's a practice. And so I gain a lot of insight and support from Gary Snyder's Practice of the Wild. Um, Gary Snyder is a Bay Area local. So, yeah, in this area and in the land and in the uh in the trees in the mountains and and reading his words, I can I can rejuvenate his spirit in this this area. And so, right, going back to spiritual resilience as practice, uh, that's why it's what we offer here at Wild Women, right? So in the podcast is the theory, and then in the in-person excursions is the practice, right? So the theory and the practice come together when we intentionally come together to build spiritual resilience and community to breathe life and oxygen into that tiny spark of wisdom inside each and every one of us, then we can grow a movement. We can grow a movement within ourselves and we can grow a movement together. And so, right, so these embodied practices translate into spiritual resilience. And so, in thinking of resilience, I have to acknowledge the work of Franz Fanon. And so he has a very robust theory of colonial psychology, and uh he he he talks about this concept of the outsourcing of suffering. And while he doesn't use the word outsourcing, I think um it helps to this this terminology of outsourcing really helps to move beyond certain jargon. I'm not saying Franz Fanon is full of jargon, but I think that outsourcing is a layman's term to kind of translate some of the messages that he, the very complex and nuanced messages that he is offering. And so for Fanon, he posits that uh race and colonization create an illusory interdependent dynamic, right? And so this category of white or whiteness, which doesn't mean necessarily translate to a skin color, it's it's more of a an identity project, um, not personal but societal and historical. And so there's this creation of the superordinate or those with power, those on the top, and the subordinate and those marginalized others, right? And so those on the top gain um power by outsourcing or marginalizing the other, right? And so this ruling class, they create a world where those on the outside, right, so this is eco-feminist philosophy 101 as coming from Val Plumwood. So those on the underbelly, the subordinate, you know, in terms of race, class, gender, ethnicity, um, ability, bear the burden or the direct weight of the suffering, right? So it's the outsourcing of suffering from those on the top to those on the margins. And so in terms of resilience, there is an inequity of suffering. And so I gain insight from womenist theologians that say, yes, uh, it's important to be resilient, but there's a little bit of nuance there that it's important to redefine resilience as not just the passive endurance of suffering, but as an active um defiant act of survival. And so being participants, right, not just passively accepting suffering as bearing the burden of, oh, this is, you know, sacred suffering. No, some of this is unjust suffering, and learning to endure is part and parcel to surviving, but also finding joy and communities of joy to share that with, communities to share that joy with is part of building resilience. And so back to what we offer at Wild Women. I'm a big fan of type 2 fun. I I I love laughing amidst the chaos. And so you'd find me, you know, preferring to be up on the top of a mountain eating a smushed peanut butter and jelly sandwich than sitting at a fancy restaurant with my nose in the air. Although I do like a nice glass of wine here and there. And I do really appreciate flushable toilets. I'm learning that as I live with my compost toilets here on the farm. So in the process of suffering, or as Donna Harrowway, one of my favorite feminist scientists calls shared suffering, I think learning to suffer together is a helpful part of the process. One thing I want to avoid, which I've seen in a lot of spiritual communities, is the overabundance of externalized suffering. And so shared suffering doesn't mean when I'm hanging out and having a good time and I say, hey, what's up, at a party, and you start telling me about your trauma. No, I don't like when people lead with their trauma. That's not fun. It's there's a time and a place for everything. I think there's um dignity in to quote France Fanon again, the right to opacity that I don't have to tell I have the right to not share my trauma with people, and I think that there's dignity in that because I think it was an episode of oh shoot. Oh, 30 rock, where someone goes to therapy or someone tells someone else their problems, and then they tell someone else their problems because they can't hold it, and then someone else tells their problems to someone else because they can't hold it, and then all of a sudden there's this toxic mess of chaos. And so as we reflect and um reflect on this eco-feminist philosophical reality that truth is interconnected, it's important to remember that when we share our suffering, that it there's no away, right? That's that's an ecological principle. Some your away is someone else's home. And so I think there's an ethical principle there in terms of ecological, the ecological networks of of psychological suffering, right? To be aware of that. So as we reflect on this and attend to this idea of suffering and the reality of suffering and the nuance of suffering and the web of suffering, it is my prayerful hope that the revelation of our own suffering is ultimately a moment of initiation into the work of healing and wholeness, and that we do it with grace, dignity, and a sense of collaboration for the greater good of the whole. So, in this journey towards self-awareness, self-reliance, building self-worth and self-respect, I am grateful to those of you who are listening. Let's just simply be together on this journey and learning to be together as we do this work. Um, it is definitely work to not turn away from suffering, but also equally part of the work to not overindulge, uh learning to live together and be committed towards the work of love and justice during these difficult times. Um, and so in response to, if I dare say it, America's 250 years celebration, which is part of this heaviness that I'm experiencing, I honorably close in stating in wildness, we trust. Thank you for listening. Be well and be wild.