The memory goes far back - to the little girl in first grade.
All eight grades learned in one room of the village school.
First graders sat in the first bench,    second in the second.
I learnt the alphabet all right. But peeking behind  I panic:
The letters in their book look different from what I know!
"I'll never learn this!"

My first veritable disaster with this property
did much to fortify the belief about myself,
that I shouldn't have come into this life,
'since I was only disturbing the people'.

I was 14 and stayed with my peasant friends.
I was listening to the grownups' evening chat.
A neighbor gossipped about the village priest.
"How shameful was his eating at the baptism"
and other harmless slandering like that.

But I could not take it, I adored this priest.
For me he was God's model of perfection.
For he was the one who had redeemed me
from the greatest torture of my childhood's hell.

During a previous holiday in the village
I had dared to approach him after church:
"Will you accept me for confession?"
"Come to my house!
since you are a Protestant,
we can't do it in the church."

I entered his study.
A cruxifix in the corner.
I knelt down spontaneously.
He followed me kneeling down.
This act of solidarity touched me deeply.
I tearfully told how I had succumbed to being raped.
[see pp42, 2002_12_07]
When I was done, he made me sit down.
Before he had listened without interruption.
Now he conveyed that there was no judgment.
"The real crime is solely the one against love".
He lent me a book about the essence of love.

I left his house and village flying.
The 4 hours of busride to my home
were the happiest since my birth.

And now they were smearing shit over Him.
Nights of torture resulted in my going to him.
I needed to know that the gossip was a lie.

His reaction shattered my statue.
Instead of taking it with humour,
thus showing the desperate child,
how one should relate to gossip,
HE walked around in the room,
growling like a tiger in a cage.

I was not present at the next mass,
 when he thundered from the pulpit.
 But I got a letter from that woman.

It arrived, when I was having fun, for a change,
during a summer holiday at the Lake of Constance.

The charges started with two proverbs,
one: "To talk is silver, to be silent is gold".
The other predicted my future as a criminal:
"What wants to become a hook, crooks in time"

I excused myself towards my playmates.
I walked, ran into the hills to kill myself.
'A monster like me has no right to live.'

As always in my life, before and after,
at the edge of the abyss --- an angel!!
From across a field a woman shouted:
"What wonderful braids!"
I turned my head, and then -- my body,
and went to help the mother&daughter
to dig out potatoes from the pure earth.

I stayed alive, but the shame did too.

How come, I could not change?
Not after this result of my "criminality",
and not after countless times that followed?

Even my husband once came to my defense,
when my "unduly giving away information"
threatened to ruin another friendship:
"She does not do it for the sake of gossip,
she naively thinks, what she tells will help."

13 years ago I came to know about a past life.
I had long hair ('braids'~), but was a man,
the arrogant son of a nobleman in Europe.
I had been thrown into a dungeon prison,
because I had lightly given away a secret
that had to do with international finances.
A sword was run through my father's heart,
and many of the simple people I detested,
who had been hurt by my deed,
groaned and farted around me.

"And he didn't die for a very long time."

The long ordeal resulted in great growth,
the benefit of which I enjoy in this life.
Still, nothing in that or this life changed
this seemingly hurtful pattern:
With all my traumatic self-discipline
I find myself again and again and again
giving away information that I shouldn't.

And each time, up to this very day,
when the lightning of blaming rage
is hurled against me,
I feel as innocently hit with surprise
as when I read that woman's charges.

Feiniger, Niedergrunstet

Self-acceptance on this last day of 2001:

My most dire liability is
my most beneficial asset
the touching stone of the healing process

Evolution is going towards
openness and transparency,
towards free sharing of all information.
What greater proof is there than the Internet.

While searching for the word "transparency",
a friend's sentence came to my mind,
once written in my desert guestbook:
"What is beautiful is your transparency.

I'll not allow people to dim my transparency.
For in this I am a beacon on their own path.
But I'll make them aware of their 2 options:

To risk being triggered by my transparency
in order to use the trigger for their healing,
or to stay away from me altogether.

From
"What does the Mother want to do?"

"God Bless You ~ Bless You, God ~ God,
Bless Yourself, You're awesome, Man, I Love You!!!
Thanks for being so real with us
and for facing your fears and problems,
and for letting us in on them."

And for letting us in on them.
And for letting us in on them.
And for letting us in on them.

Maryam, 2002/03/04-10

Yesterday "I drove backward" with the help of the Mother:
my depression subsided slowly as I gave in to doing nothing.
But it was there again when I opened my eyes two hours ago,
I did, what I should do, "whenever something bothers you":

Release of Judgment

"I rj, that I'm not OK , if I judge myself for judging my depression.
I rj, that I'm not OK, if I judge myself for feeling this depression.
[="I shouldn't be depressed, since my life is so good and I am so whole"]
I rj, that feeling depressed is unbearable and should be avoided."

This time it worked,
I felt that the feeling was vibrating me,
I remembered, that FEELING is LIFE.
[Nov.26,2011: see the song "itfini":
"for all my joy is in my very feeling"]

It was then that I stumbled at 'Morning Glory'
 and inserted it as "entrance image" to this pp.

But the further I got with sculpting this work,
the less content I was with this pp as vessel.

There was one particular troubling metaphor
which hit consciousness and sentience alike:
"HELL".

The image became so pervasive and pushy,
that it ripped open the Mother's Homepage
 demanding the insertion of verbal messages.

Finally the content of a new pp took shape.
It's where I moved my work with the Mother.

Now that my Hell has gotten a sculpted form,
I discover a photo of another "aurora borealis"
which the artist calls:      MORNING GLORY
"View from my DRIVEway 6:30 AM, November 6, 2001"

On Nov. 26,2011 - i.e. 10 years later - I no longer find this image on the site,
but now there is a beautiful video, which shows the movement of the aurora.

Maryam, 2002/05/05

I'll give way to what might be self-pity in telling one of 3 memories,
that haunted me while studying the Mother's Account about Herself:

"Being invited into His mind, in those days,
was sort of like going into a museum
where there were many fascinating things,
but I wasn't supposed to make noise
and I wasn't supposed to touch or move anything,
let alone dance around and play with any of it.

I thought He was much too serious
and that He didn't take Me seriously enough to think
I had any input of value. ..."

The man whom I loved and who loved me,
but who was married and the father of two
and who was a Jew, while I was a German,
found a way to come from Israel to see me
by getting himself invited to teach a course
  in modern Hebrew at Tuebingen University..

This was in 1962, only 17 years after the "end" of the Holocaust.
The class, in which I volunteered as his assistant, lasted 6 weeks.

Then we had about 10 days for ourselves, though secretly.
He rented a car for a trip through his hateful "fatherland".
One night we strolled through the rebuilt old city of Frankfurt.
He was born there - 16 years before I was born in Stuttgart.

Looking back now on this situation charged with too many emotions,
it is clear that something was bound to trigger him.
But the "misfortune" was not only our ignorance concerning triggers,
but the kind of trigger that prepared itself.

Suddenly I snatched myself away and hid in a doorway.
The girl-in-love wanted him to look for me and find me.

He did not come.
He walked away.
He was ..... gone.

I followed his invisible footsteps until the junction.
Not knowing where to turn, I stood under a lantern.
Finally I saw him coming toward me terribly slowly.
When close, he hit me with cold sarcasm:
"What are you standing there like a whore."

Looking back now this was a classical reflection
of my own torturing GUILT regarding this my love.

I wanted to run away, penniless as I was.
But he grabbed me harshly, humiliating me.

A night in Hell. Hatred! More humiliation.
He loathed himself . A married man of 40!
How could he love such a childish creature!
A GERMAN!

When I was 9 months old, my mother wrote:
"Sie kann sich so unbaendig freuen.
She can be so outrageously happy."
At the age of 12 years she wrote:
"She is much much too serious.
What is to be blamed partly,
is my lack of self-control."

But I was deeply in love.
For once I had relinquished my heaviness.
For once I allowed myself to be playful.
The punishment was terrible.

"It"- our love? - would have been over,
if it hadn't been for a shock the next day.

We drove back.   Not a word was spoken.
He fell asleep, he drifted off the highway.
I screamed till the car came to a standstill.
A heap of sand!  Workers sitting behind it!
The miracle ... was overwhelming for him:
"It shouldn't have ended like that", he said.
That night, in a simple hostel, I conceived.

5 years later, in Israel, married, 3 kids,
I suspected to be pregnant once more.
My husband was miserable and furious,
out of proportion to the nation's predicament.
The 1967 war was imminent.
Many people would get killed,
Israel might get wiped out ~~

It was then, that I wrote new Hebrew words
to an American folksong, which so often had made me cry,
when I was alone with my pregnancy
and the delivery and caretaking of my illegitimate child ~~~

2002_08_11, Evening,
When I decided - after this day of sadness - to sculpt what I feel, in this puzzle piece,
I had no idea, that the image above shows Micha in front of the other 4 family members.

When the fog of confusing dreams had settled this morning,
one scene took a clearer and clearer shape, and made me sad.

I had left little Micha, about 5 years old, in a shop of friends,
and after some hours realized that I had forgotten about him.
I consoled myself, that the shop was selling nails and the like,
and that the little guy would have fun playing with these.
But I felt guilty and rushed over to hug and fetch him.

In real life, of course, I had never forgotten him.
But I had taken myself from him, 3 times too early.

When he was 7, I took up a job and wasn't home, when he came from school.
Though he was taken care of well, it was me, whom he needed.

When he was 14, I fled from my marriage, leaving the kids with their father.
After some months he joined me, like the others, but the trauma stayed on.

When he was in the army, not yet 19, I stopped being a normal mother.
I moved into my mobile home and when he came for leave,
he had to stay with his sister and brother-in-law.

In all three cases my move was a matter of life or death for me.
But I was painfully aware, that Micha would have to pay the price.

Maybe, this is not at all reality, but a projection.
A projection of my sadness, that always engulfs me,
when I feel the veil between what Micha lives
and what he doesn't live.

Other mothers would praise themselves
for having such a good, healthy, son,
very successful in his hightech career
and very loved and loving in his family.
He believes he is happy.

But I read too many signs of denial.

This familiar, ongoing experience
was sharpened by an unusual one:
The photos of my brother, killed at the age of 27, arrived!

As part of my "labour of mourning" in March 1970,
I had gathered all photos and documents into an album,
but had bequeathed it to my nephew when he became 18.

Since then there was no direct word from him or his sister.
Now I asked them to borrow me the photos to scan them.
It's how I learnt, that my brother, who would be 60 this year,
would now be a grandfather of 2 very pretty granddaughters.

Is there a coincidence between the 2 sadnesses?

Soon after - I found myself in the pool with the little ones.
Usually Itamar plays alone or with his sister or other kids.
Today he glued himself to me.
At one time he even rushed towards me through the water
and gasped:"I want a hug",
and made me hold him tightly.

How are these three little male faces,
all at the age of four and a half,
of Eberhard, my youngest sibling,
of Micha, my youngest child,
of Itamar, my youngest grandson,
connected?
And what does the connection mean?
I don't know.
I can only accept and move the sadness.

Less laughter in life at the age of eight and denial in face at the age of nineteen

2003_06_13