A few days after Hurricane Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast, I went to my favorite salon for a haircut.
I was admiring the results in the mirror and writing a check
when I overheard a heated conversation coming from the neighboring
chair. A stylist was asking her customer, in a rather incredulous
tone, whether he believed the federal government's response
to Hurricane Katrina had been acceptable. "Yes," he declared.
"The federal government couldn't do anything until the state
asked for help." His stylist paused, mid-snip, and asked him
about the people who died, who still were dying nearly a week
after the hurricane hit shore. "They should have evacuated,"
was his terse reply. "Why did they wait around for the
government to help them?"
I felt my blood pressure rising, opened my mouth to retort,
and then bit my tongue, hard. Unbridled hostility never wins
hearts and minds. With a quick farewell to my stylist, I hastily
decamped… and fumed all the way home. It wasn't just the
conversation in the salon that was eating at me, but also
the realization that many other Americans must share his attitude
of indifference. How far had our nation wandered from
our essential humanity, I wondered, if blaming the victims
of a disaster trumped our tradition of helping those who suffer?
Have we become so politically polarized that defending our
ideology overwhelms our charitable impulses to help our fellow
citizens?
In my self-righteous fury, I could see that I was indulging
in the same kind of judgment I was condemning in others. Then,
out of nowhere came the blinding realization: It takes
two sides to play ideological tug-of-war. What if I simply
let go of my end of the rope? The game of tug-of-war involves
two sides pulling on a rope as hard as they can, with each
side trying to topple the other. To win, you can either pull
the rope hard enough to drag your opponent over to your side—or
you can let go of the rope at the peak of the contest, when
both sides are straining as hard as they can in opposite directions.
Then your opponent goes flying, because your resistance was
what was holding him up. As long as I held fast to my end
of the tug-of-war rope, full of fury and self-righteous condemnation,
the other side would keep pulling just as hard in the opposite
direction. My struggle doesn’t weaken my opponent’s position—it
supports it.
A tug of war describes the energies at play every Full
Moon, when the Sun and Moon are in opposing signs. At
Full Moons we can catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror
of our opponents and become all too aware of our similarities.
We can also bring a new illumination to the issues brewing
since the New Moon. The chart for the September 3 New Moon
featured a volatile opposition between the Sun and Moon in
Virgo and Uranus in Pisces. The horrific scenes from the Gulf
Coast illustrated the Virgo/Pisces tension of organization
vs. chaos and criticism vs. compassion, and the Uranian lawlessness,
rootlessness, and flat-out insanity that turned a natural
disaster into something unnatural. Now, at the Virgo/Pisces
Full Moon, the light of Virgo’s practical insight and Pisces’
compassion will illuminate the destruction - not just
in the Gulf, but across the nation – and reveal the full extent
of our helpfulness and our criticism, our compassion and our
denial.
There is work to be done, and it’s too important and too
daunting for either side to handle alone. To solve hurricane-size
problems requires a collective effort, employing both our
practical and insightful Virgo selves, and our Piscean empathy
and creativity. Yet the harder we yank on the invisible
rope that connects us, each side trying to drag the other
over to our point of view, the harder the other side will
inevitably pull away. We have to let go of the rope -
or, better yet, use it to pull together toward the center
that connects us. For my part, this means finding compassion
not only for those who suffered and died, but also for those
who did not show compassion for their suffering. That isn’t
easy, friends. I'm a lot better at being playing a critical
Virgo than an empathetic Pisces.
The day after the incident at the salon, though, I had a
glimpse of that whimsical, ecstatic Piscean compassion and
its ability to melt the harshest criticisms of my inner Virgo.
As I gathered with a group of friends to honor the New
Moon, I asked that the Sun and Moon in Virgo help me untangle
the knots in my heart, and invoked the consciousness-changing
gift of Uranus to help me "let go of the rope."
As I spoke, the solemn ritual was interrupted by the loud,
continuous bleat of a car's horn. Irritated, we all turned
to look out the front door. "What in the..." "Can't they do
something about that?"
The noise grew louder and louder - and we grew more and more
annoyed - until the source of the racket pulled up and parked
directly across the street. The hapless driver leaped from
the car, and as we watched him frantically poking beneath
the hood, trying to disconnect the horn, our annoyance softened
–transformed first into sympathy, then into mirth. After
several long minutes, with the sound of the horn modulating
comically and his face flushing deeper crimson by the minute,
the driver finally gave up and drove away, slinking low in
his seat, his horn muffled but still bleating as he disappeared
into the distance.
And watching from inside, our little group laughed until
we cried, the cranky knots of annoyance and criticism completely
dissolved – at least for the moment - in the glorious, heart-opening
waters of Piscean laughter.
