Marriage equality has a surprising role model in Saint Valentine, a 3rd-century Roman priest who defied the restrictive marriage laws of his era to bless couples who were forbidden to marry. His feast day is, of course, Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14).
Saint Valentine was not gay, but he put love above the law to perform outlaw marriages in his day. He can be an inspiration for the current movement to legalize same-sex marriage.
The Roman Emperor Claudius II thought that he would get more and better soldiers if men were not allowed to marry, so he issued a decree outlawing marriage. Saint Valentine (or Valentinus in Latin) continued to perform weddings in secret until he was arrested and executed for defying the ban on such marriages. Legend has it that he fell in love with a woman who visited him in prison, sending her a letter that ended “From your Valentine” — the original prototype for today’s Valentine greeting cards.
There are at least 12 saints named Valentine (including a woman martyr called Saint Valentina). The many stories about them overlap and are hard to verify, so the Roman Catholic Church removed Saint Valentine from its general calendar in 1969, while still allowing local celebrations. Saint Valentine (or Valentinos) is commemorated in the Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox traditions, although not always on Feb. 14. Relics of Saint Valentine are enshrined at churches across Europe, including the Greek island of Lesbos.
Saint Valentine also did weddings for Christian couples at a time when the church was persecuted. Now the tables are turned and conservative Christians are sometimes persecuting LGBTQ people. They are among the most visible opponents of marriage equality.
Following in the footsteps of Saint Valentine
But brave clergy are following in the footsteps of St. Valentine. They pioneered the blessing of same-sex relationships long before it was on the secular political agenda and continue to face punishment for defying marriage laws. For example, Troy Perry performed what may be the first modern same-sex wedding in 1969, a year after he founded the LGBTQ-affirming Metropolitan Community Churches. In a more recent case, Presbyterian lesbian minister Jane Spahr was censured in 2012 by the Presbyterian Church for marrying 16 same-sex couples during the brief period when such marriages were legal in California.
Another liberating way to look at marriage is provided by the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. They have no clergy, so couples marry each other directly, without a priest or minister to make it official. This sometimes led to legal complications.
George Fox, a founder of the Quakers, explained the concept in 1669 by saying, “For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests’ or the magistrates’; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s; and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; it is the Lord’s work, and we are but witnesses.”
LGBTQ Valentine prayers
I wrote the following LGBTQ Saint Valentine Prayer when a friend requested prayers as the Church of England considered same-sex marriage on Feb. 15, 2017. They voted to continue study debate, so the need for prayer is ongoing. The opening lines are included in Q Spirit’s Litany of Queer Saints:
Dear Saint Valentine, help everyone to find and keep their true God-appointed love. Guide the church to affirm and bless all those whom God has joined together, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Saint Valentine, pray for us.
Touch hearts so that ignorance and prejudice of the church and the institutions it influences do not continue to generate hate crimes and violence against people who only want to love each other. Inspire lawmakers and leaders to remove laws that prevent us from getting married and accessing our rights. Free families that are poisoned by lies that make them break bonds that should last a lifetime with daughters, sons and relatives who dare to live their diversity in freedom. Thank you for blessing us with the rainbow, a divine sign, and for praying that we can live in full dignity. Saint Valentine, pray for us. Amen.
History has many saintly same-sex lovers
While Saint Valentine is not known to have performed same-sex weddings, church history does provide powerful examples of same-sex couples to inspire today’s lovers — whether or not we have the right to marry. Links to some of them are listed below. Happy Valentine’s Day!
___ Top image credit: Saint Valentinus mosaic, photo by CafeCesura
___ This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.
This article was originally published on Q Spirit in February 2017, was expanded with new material over the years, and was most recently updated for accuracy on Feb. 12, 2022.
Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author who writes regularly about LGBTQ spirituality.She holds degrees in religion, journalism and art history.She was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served as its national ecumenical officer, advocating for LGBTQ rights at the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches.
One of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue — experiences we’ve called spiritual — are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence — as elements of human wholeness. Dacher Keltner and his Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley have been pivotal in this emergence. From the earliest years of his career, he investigated how emotions are coded in the muscles of our faces, and how they serve as “moral sensory systems.” He was called on as Emojis evolved; he consulted on Pete Docter’s groundbreaking movie Inside Out.
All of this, as Dacher sees it now, led him deeper and deeper into investigating the primary experience of awe in human life — moments when we have a sense of wonder, an experience of mystery, that transcends our understanding. These, it turns out, are as common in human life globally as they are measurably health-giving and immunity-boosting. They bring us together with others, again and again. They bring our nervous system and heartbeat and breath into sync — and even into sync with other bodies around us.
Krista Tippett, host:To me, one of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue — experiences we’ve called spiritual — are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence — as elements of human wholeness. And Dacher Keltner and his Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley have been pivotal in this emergence.
From the earliest years of his career Dacher investigated how emotions are coded in the muscles of our faces, and how they serve as “moral sensory systems” — the way a feeling, like sadness or fear or a sense of injustice, goes on to infuse how we see everything that’s happening.
[music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoë Keating]
He was called on as Emojis evolved; he consulted on Pete Docter’s groundbreaking movie Inside Out. And all of this, as Dacher sees it now, led him deeper and deeper into investigating the primary experience of awe in human life — moments when we have a sense of wonder, an experience of mystery, that transcends our understanding. These, it turns out, are as common in human life globally as they are measurably health-giving and immunity-boosting. They bring us together with others, again and again. They bring our nervous system, and heartbeat, and breath into sync — and even into sync with other bodies around us. This science is a wildly accessible, minute-to-minute invitation to practice a common human experience that is literally life-giving, and nourishing, and actively good for this world of pain and promise that we inhabit.
I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.
I’ve been in a conversation of friendship and shared curiosity with Dacher Keltner for years, and I’m so happy to bring this conversation to you as he has now translated his studies into a book: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
Tippett:So, I want to start at the beginning, which is where I like to start.
Dacher Keltner:OK.
Tippett:And it seems to me that so much — I mean, at the beginning of you, right? [laughs]
Keltner:[laughs]
Tippett:It seems to me that so much of your science — one way to talk about it, there are many ways to talk about it, but one way to talk about it is you are taking the stuff of what has always been moral virtue, and you’re taking it into the laboratory. So I start to wonder, just knowing a little bit about you. Where — if you would trace, I know that you had a rather kind of experimental, unorthodox, spiritual upbringing. [laughs]
Keltner:[laughs] Oh, no. Yeah.
Tippett: So I wonder if you look back at that, and if you trace the roots of this inquiry in you, this curiosity, and the way you’ve come at it.
Keltner:Oh yeah. You know, there are times in a scientific career where we believe we’re doing work that has some degree of objectivity, where you realize it’s all subjective and personal. You know, I was raised by a literature professor who loves romanticism and Virginia Woolf and quoted William Blake and others in the household. And then a visual artist, my dad, who loves Goya and Francis Bacon and all the horrors of their art, and the awe-inspiring horrors. And I grew up in a really, kind of a radical time of the late ’60s and Laurel Canyon. And so awe was all around me. And I think that being raised by people in the humanities and being a little contrarian, I guess, like kids often are, I always wanted proof [laughs].
Tippett:Right.
Keltner:And I wanted to measure things and I wanted to test things. And so it’s very fitting that, at this stage in my life, I would turn to science to figure out awe. And so yeah, it — and to find in that science and the limits of the science, sort of the what lies beyond it, which is the metaphysical or the spiritual. And so studying awe really brought me into contact with spirituality, too.
Tippett:And then, it’s so interesting to me that you really wandered into a new science as it was emerging, right?
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:I mean, I’ve had this conversation with other neuroscientists as well. And it’s really easy, I think, for people now to forget that this particular form of science has just been around for a few decades.
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:And you were right there at the beginning. It feels like you walked into this new science of emotions, which science had very, very strictly avoided. And it was really new for you to be taking things like laughter and gratitude and love and desire and compassion into study.
Keltner:You know, it was astonishing to me. I was in graduate school in the mid to late ’80s at Stanford. And it was the heyday of what’s called the “cognitive revolution.” And the metaphor was that the human mind was like a computer with software and hardware, and cranking out these algorithms and computations, and that’s consciousness. Right?
And some of the most famous people in the field just felt like emotions couldn’t be studied, it was inappropriate to study them. They were intractable in terms of measurement and conceptualization, or how we would even measure them. And I just felt my past at that time of being raised by these wonderfully emotional parents, who are like — but what about poetry and what about paintings and what about the feelings you have? And what would human life be like without crying and laughter? So it was astonishing to just hear the brightest minds say: there’s no place for human emotion in prejudice, in racism, in morality — literally. Carrying on Western European traditions, in many ways. But what a great opportunity to fall into as a young scholar.
Tippett:So now you have written this wonderful book, the first lines, “I have taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It is not obvious why I ended up doing this work: I have been a pretty wound-up, anxious person for significant chunks of my life and was thrown out of my first meditation class.”
Keltner:[laughs] Which is true.
Tippett:So thank you for that full disclosure. [laughs]
Keltner:Yeah. I have to say, my friend and I in college went to this meditation class, and they had us chanting, “I am a being of purple fire.”
Tippett:Yeah, which is a reason to laugh. I give you that.
Keltner:Yeah. And I’m like, “I’m not a being a purple fire. I’m an adolescent who wants to meet interesting people.” And so yep. We got tossed out of that class. So — [laughs]
Tippett:But I mean, yeah. And you — I’ve been following your work, off and on for many years, and this really has deepened and deepened and deepened into this, this study of awe. And you say now after 20 years, you have the answer to the perennial question: how to live a good life? And the answer is: to “find awe.” And so tell me if, is this right? You’ve done these massive studies, right? I don’t know, somewhere I’ve got 2,600 narratives, 20 languages.
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:And were you surprised? I kind of was — to read that what most commonly led people around the world to feel awe was an experience of other people’s “courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.”
Keltner:Yeah. You know, the first surprise was: it’s other people around us — everyday people — who bring us awe, and what we called moral beauty.
Tippett:And I love that language, “moral beauty.”
Keltner:Yeah, kindness, courage, overcoming obstacles. You know, saving people’s lives. Just time and time again the most common source of awe is other people. And you wouldn’t think that given what we look at on Twitter and Instagram, but it’s a deep, a deep tendency to choke up and get tears thinking about what people can do.
Tippett:And so you kind of named — and this is how the book is structured, around “Eight Wonders of Life.” And I mean, I’m assuming I hear that as in interior analogs to what we call Wonders of the World. Is that right?
Keltner:I think we need new Wonders of the World.
Tippett:Right!
Keltner:You know, you look at those, and those are all power based.
Tippett:Those are monuments, right?
Keltner:What nonsense, you know?
Tippett:Yeah. Go on. Go on.
Keltner:Well this is saying, that’s like a hierarchical conceptualization of wonder, like what did the guy in charge in the Egyptian period do?
Tippett:That’s right. Make thousands of people do —
Keltner:Yeah. Or Trump Tower or whatever. But, you know. But yeah, and that was this big surprise in this research, is how ordinary awe can be. It’s everywhere, right? So it’s the flowers blooming and the moral beauty of people, and some pattern of light on the sidewalk. So yeah, we called them “Eight Wonders of Everyday Life.”
Tippett:Yeah. So what I would like to do is — obviously we can’t walk through it all, but I just kind of went through myself and pulled out some threads…
Keltner:That’s good.
Tippett:… that intrigue and illuminate and turns a phrase that for me, put something into a new light. So I just like to walk through it that way. And yeah, first of all, there is this, what you call the first wonder of life, “moral beauty.”
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippet:And there’s also, there’s this — in terms of this moral beauty of awe at the kindness and strength and courage and overcoming of others, you use this phrase: “allowing goodness its own speech.” So what is that? What does that mean to you? Or how did that come out of the research?
Keltner:Well it comes — “allowing goodness its own speech,” comes out of a graduation speech by Toni Morrison, the great writer, who said this is what she sees to be the purpose of her creative life and literature and the like. And Krista, I mean obviously we live in these times where you arrive at a really cynical view of human beings. And that cynical view, I might add, has prevailed in a lot of the social sciences, and it’s been refuted — that people actually share instinctively, we cooperate, we have neurophysiological systems that help us care for a lot of people. It’s, as Darwin said, sympathy is our strongest instinct.
Tippet:Yeah.
Keltner:And what struck me about the ease with which people around the world would, like, “Hey, what’s awe inspiring?” They didn’t mention a God or the Grand Canyon. They mention ordinary people doing amazing things. And so I felt like that scientific act was “allowing goodness its own speech.” Like, man, this just surfaces in how people think about the transcendent.
And I hope — you know I just, I think we need more of that. We need more stories around goodness and this human capacity. So for me, like I said, I can get really tense and anxious. I can be a little misanthropic. I hate to say it. [laughs]
Tippet:[laughs] Yeah.
Keltner:You know, I wasn’t the kindest little kid. And this science was like: wow, there is a lot of goodness out there that we need to allow its articulation.
Tippett:So the second one is “Collective Effervescence.” And what wonderful language for what you’re describing is, again, so ordinary and built into all kind of life.
Keltner:Oh my god. Yeah. “Collective Effervescence.” Émile Durkheim, the great French sociologist: just moving together, feeling exalted, bubbling, being ecstatic, is just this deep tendency. Young people feel it all the time. You know, they dance, and they go to political rallies and sporting events and world —
Tippett:Right.
Keltner:But it’s everywhere. You know, once I started to think about this — I love walking in Berkeley, and Berkeley’s this buzzing, high-energy place. And you would see these patterns of collective effervescence that the science is starting to capture, you know. People walking to work, little kids going to a dance class, people at a picnic, people lining up to get onto a bus. We just have this tendency to start to move together.
Tippett:Right.
Keltner:And it brings us a lot of sense of unity and a sense of awe. And if you really push it in the right context, bliss. [laughs] And a sense of like, “Wow, look at what I’m part of. You know, I’m part of this human — this collective.” What a striking tendency we have.
And I, as I started to dig into this concept, I love Søren Kierkegaard’s quote. You know, this grouchy philosopher writing about dread. He’d go out and walk, and he would say: it puts me into contact with the significance of insignificant things. You know? And that’s how I felt, like man, watching kids line up to go play is awesome. Or marching to their preschool in their incredible ways.
Tippett:Well, yeah. And you have this phrase also — that somehow what becomes collective effervescence has to do with moving the way our bodies “were meant to move.”
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:Which is so interesting to think about. But everything you’re talking about though, we do so unconscious of the fact that this is primal and life-giving. Right? Which is what you’re saying, what the science is saying.
Keltner:Yeah. You know, I mean, almost all cultures have deep histories and traditions of dance. I was just in the Himalayas, in Bhutan for this project, and the Layap people dance all the time. You know, they have a government ceremony and then they dance. And that is very human to move in unison like that. And it’s, as you said, Krista, it’s life-giving. And I hate juxtaposing with our screen-based, chair-based life, but we’ve lost that. And, but I see young people moving back to it of board games and dance clubs and, so I have hope we can return to it.
[music: “Blue Latex” by Blue Dot Sessions]
Tippett:I mean, you also use this, you say “awe is an emotion of the superorganism.”
Keltner:[laughs]
Tippett:And I’ve heard you talk about this in a few contexts, and I want you to talk about the superorganism because I guess — is collective effervescence also an expression of this when this happens? When we’re together in these gatherings having these experiences?
Keltner:Yeah, and this is where the science is really cool, which is that, you know, you can get people and they start moving in unison. Like in experiments you have them walk in unison or move their — do some gestures in unison. And they’re like, okay, this is kind of artificial, or it doesn’t have the power of dance or a political rally. But then their brains start showing similar patterns of activation throughout the 80 billion neurons that are their brains. And their physiologies, their cortisol, and their hormones start linking up. And the next thing you know, it’s like, well, we’re kind of this a shared mental state. And—
Tippett:And you can measure that, right, with your science now?
Keltner:Yeah, definitely. You know —
Tippett:You can measure that we literally physiologically sync up in all kinds of minute ways.
Keltner:Yeah. I mean, one study had people listen to music together, and their brains started to synchronize — people in the music venue — in a similar pattern of activation. So they’re literally, their neurophysiological mental state is similar.
We did a study of really poor kids and veterans rafting, and we measured the hormone cortisol, which is a stress hormone. At the start of the day, their hormone levels were all different. They’re separate individuals. By the end of the day, after having rafted with a little collection of people, their hormone levels are the same. Lots of data on that. And, and that’s striking that these processes of collective effervescence — you’re doing rituals in a church, right? You’re chanting at a game. You are greeting people in a ceremony. They sync us up physiologically, which enables lots of good things.
Tippett:Yeah. Oh gosh, it’s so fascinating.
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:And then of course nature, which is maybe what I would’ve expected to be the first, from 2,600 narratives. I might have thought that the most stories would be about awe of the natural world. And of course, it’s in here, and it’s important. And some of the things you’re describing happen outside. But I want to hear more about the neurophysiology, what you call “the neurophysiology of wild awe.”
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:Which I guess is that awe that happens outdoors, in the wild.
Keltner:Yeah. It is a universal. It might be mushrooms in Russia, or the desert landscape in part of the Middle East, or the ocean for surfers — but nature is directly evocative of awe, but not as much as other people, which surprised us.
And the neurophysiology is amazing. It is truly amazing. And it gets back to this old indigenous idea of — we are part of an ecosystem, our bodies are part of them. So there’s a review of how nature benefits us, and there are 21 pathways by which that’s true, including awe. But what really struck me is the neurophysiology, which is, you know — sound waves coming off of streams, and moving bodies of water, activate the vagus nerve. They calm us down. There are chemical compounds in nature. You might smell a flower or tree bark, or the resin on a tree, that activate parts of the brain and the immune system, right? So our bodies are wired to respond in an open, empowering, strengthening way to nature. That work is largely done in Japan and South Korea.
Tippett:Interesting.
Keltner:And I think one of the broader lessons that awe provides for us is, you know, these ideas of separate self. Like, “oh, I’m different from other people.” Which is true, but we’re also synced up with other people. “I’m different from nature.” That’s true. But we’re also part of an ecosystem.
And I’m always persuaded by certain kinds of physiological data, which say like, man, you’ve got cells in your skin that are tracking chemicals in nature that benefit you. So it’s striking to me, the uses and meaning of that science.
Tippett:And, and you mentioned the vagus nerve, which is our favorite nerve here at On Being. [laughs]
Keltner:That makes me tear up, I have to say. [laughs]
Tippett:[laughs] Yeah, I think it’s one of maybe your favorite nerves too.
Keltner:Oh my God.
Tippett:So I have a question for you.
Keltner:Yeah.
Tippett:So you call it, interestingly, the “caretaking nerve.” Obviously, I think it translates to the “wandering nerve.” I don’t know if you know Resmaa Menakem, who’s worked with racialized trauma in the body. He calls it the “soul nerve.” And is this also— so I feel like the vagus nerve is this great frontier that’s helping explain a lot. And yet, is this also new science? I feel like it’s everywhere now. But was the vagus nerve not seen before? Or was it just not taken seriously?
Keltner:What a terrific question, Krista. And I love the phrase “soul nerve.” I’ll use that going forward.
Tippett:Okay.
Keltner:I think we should use the word “soul” more often. I know you do, but we narrow-minded scientists should too. You know? Yeah, it’s so striking to reflect on how cultural biases shape science, and then our claims about human nature. You know, for 60, 70 years we’ve been studying fight-or-flight physiology. “Oh, we’re wired to fight or flee in life.” You know? And that was a sense of what physiology was — it’s really about self-preservation. And we made progress in understanding cortisol and the amygdala, the threat-related region of the brain, and blood pressure.
Tippett:It was this view of human nature that really penetrated the Western society, right?
Keltner:Totally.
Tippett:So, yeah. So you’re saying, so we applied that lens to our bodies.
Keltner:We did. And, with profound myopias. And one of them being, well, your body has the vagus nerve. And we call it the autonomic nervous system. There are all these bundles of nerves coming out of your spinal cord that affect blood flow and digestion and muscle contractions and glucose and so forth. And the vagus nerve is part of that system. It’s a mammalian bundle of nerves. It stretches from the top of your spinal cord. It wanders through your heart and lungs and digestive organs. And remarkably, Krista, gets into your gut.
Tippett:Yeah.
Keltner:And receives all this information from the microbiome. It is the mind-body nexus. And we just hadn’t studied it. And it was really Steve Porges, who is this scholar in the ’80s, who was saying — hey, we’ve got this love organ in the body. And people are like, “oh, I know what that is.”
Remembering a world-renown performer, World War II spy, and Civil Rights, Activist
Josephine Baker in 1970 | Photo Credit | Getty Images
So, there’s a myth about Black activists, particularly women, that insists we tend to sacrifice too much for the cause, neglecting self-care. However, many examples throughout history show how Black joy and the struggle live side-by-side, breaking the binary argument. For instance, Josephine Baker became a world-renown performer, a Civil Rights Activist, and even a World War II Spy for the French. Yet, despite her commitment to fighting against racial segregation, she looked amazing every step of the way, met some of the most interesting, influential people, and captivated the hearts of millions.
Baker, born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. She spent her youth living in poverty, and “at age eight Josephine cleaned houses and babysat for wealthy white families, often being poorly treated.” However, Baker’s love of dancing lifted her out of these circumstances, landing her a spot on Broadway. By the 1920s, Josephine Baker became a wildly popular performer in France but dedicated much of her life to fighting against racism.
Josephine Baker became an icon within the Black community, representing poise, beauty, and grace. Yet, still, she felt the sting of Jim Crow, facing blatant disrespect because of her skin color. By 19, she left the United States, becoming a burlesque dancer in Paris music halls. “Her risqué dance routines while clad in little more than a string of pearls and a rubber banana skirt made her a Jazz Age sensation. After branching out into singing and acting in films, she became Europe’s highest-paid entertainer,” becoming a French citizen in 1937, several years before the start of World War II.
Josephine Baker in Paris | Photo Credit | Getty Images
Josephine Baker became a spy in World War II for the French. While originally from America, she was dedicated to the French people saying, “France made me who I am, the Parisians gave me their hearts, and I am ready to give them my life.”Working with the French Resistance, Baker helped by “smuggling secret messages in invisible ink on her musical sheets.” Because she was famous, no one found her travels inherently suspicious.
“Baker would eavesdrop and flirt to gather information about German troop locations and airfields from high-ranking Italian, Japanese, and Nazi officials. Fellow secret agent Jacques Abtey, masquerading as her assistant, recorded the information in invisible ink on her sheet music, while Baker pinned important photos to her underwear and counted on her fame to avoid a strip search (History Extra).”
“She hid Jewish refugees and weapons in her château that Bakerskin had helped pay for.” Baker fought against American racism and German Naziism, becoming a champion for many people. Notice no one ever accused Baker of disregarding her self-care. Her understanding of the struggle and unwavering activism lived side-by-side with her captivating performances across Europe.
America’s legacy of racism ran off the young starlet, who became a world treasure. France, by comparison, offered a better quality of life for Black people, which was well-established. Following the Lousiana Purchase of 1803, many Black Americans who could leave for France did so, leading to the first Mass Migration of its kind, years before the Harlem Renaissance. “After World War I broke out, more than 200,000 American black soldiers, mostly from the South, came to France to fight for freedom and democracy — something they didn’t have back in their own country (NPR).”
The French, who gifted the United States the Statue of Liberty to celebrate the abolition of slavery, offered a haven for Josephine Baker, who, like most Black people of the era, understood the difficulties of living in the Jim Crow south. Nevertheless, Baker took the most precious thing she could from America — herself.
Josephine Baker became an icon within the Black community, representing poise, beauty, and grace.
Not only did she leave, but Baker also continued to fight against the racism that divided her home country. Notably, the “Negro singer” canceled her plans to appear in Atlanta after three separate hotels refused her lodging. White Americans, during her lifetime, many supporters of segregation stood in stark opposition to her resistance. Fueled by her fame, Baker became an indispensable activist bringing attention to the sheer inhumanity of America’s apartheid.
In 1951, Josephine Baker refused to perform for a segregated audience in the United States, rejecting a $10,000-a-week-deal to perform at the Copa City Club in Miami. “She persisted, and Baker triumphed, performing before the first integrated audiences in the U.S.” Her resistance placed her at the forefront of the Civil Rights resistance. The NAACP named her its Most Outstanding Woman of the Year.
Josephine Baker, March on Washington, August 28, 1963, | Photo Credit | Fair Use Image
“I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.
And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ’cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world. . . . (Josephine Baker as cited by Washington Post).
Imagine that, walking into palaces and being welcomed like royalty only to come home and be treated like a second or third-class citizen because of the color of your skin — that’s what it was like to take a walk in Josephine Baker’s shoes. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, his wife Coretta Scott King “asked her to consider taking her husband’s place as the Civil Rights Movement leader. Baker refused, saying that her children were “too young to lose their mother.”
While she refused to be the face of the movement, she continued to fight against racial segregation and intolerance throughout her life. As a result of her performances, activism, and service to France, “Josephine Baker will become the first Black woman to be entombed in the Pantheon in Paris,” praising her as a lasting icon.
You see, Josephine Baker shattered the activist trope long ago, dispelling the myth that Black activists can’t fight against racism while also having a good time. Her career also challenged the notion that women are reduced to their beauty or ability to produce change. No one can mistake her for just a pretty face or a nose-to-the-grind activist. Josephine Baker’s story reminds us all that Black women are dynamic and don’t have to choose one path or another; they can take the road less traveled and still triumph in the end.
The Lord of Pleasure is a welcome card in any reading, bringing in a sense of harmony and balance. Existing relationships broaden and deepen, giving an extended sense of contentment and satisfaction.
It’s important to recognise, with this card, that its influence extends only to established relationships – those which already have a history of their own. It will come up in a reading to indicate major steps forward, strengthened commitment, marriage, recovery after trial.
Mostly, it will relate to intimate relationships because of a strong link to contentment within sexual partnerships. Sometimes, the Lord of Pleasure will appear to mark the point at which a previously purely romantic relationship extends to become a sexual one as well. Because of this influence, there are also several connotations of creativity and fertility.
We have tended, in recent times, to lose sight of the true higher interpretation of the word ‘pleasure’, and that sometimes leads to misunderstanding about the Six of Cups. The card is not so much about the act of sex, but rather about the wealth of emotional contentment that can arise from being in a fulfilled sexual relationship. Good sexual experience is one of the greatest acknowledgements of our physical state. It adds richness to our understanding of ourselves as humans.
Philosophies for Life Jan 31, 2023 In this video we will be talking about how to think clearly from the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a devout student of the philosophy of Stoicism and constructed a series of autobiographical writings, now known as the Meditations.
The Gap originally targeted the younger generation when it opened, with its name referring to the generation gap of the time. It originally sold everything that Levi Strauss & Co made in every style, size, and color, and organized the stock by size. The Gap was the first of many shops that carried only Levi’s.
(wikipedia.org)
In 1969, real estate investor Don Fisher opened a store in San Francisco aimed at teens and college kids, offering Levi’s blue jeans alongside records and tapes. Fisher planned to call the store Pants and Discs, but his wife Doris came up with the winning name: “The Gap,” shorthand for generation gap.
In his book, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche tells a story of how man is the bridge between the animal and the overman. The overman is a being that is beyond good and evil; a being that has transcended the limitations of the human condition.
The overman is something that man can aspire to be, but it is not something that man can easily achieve.
The animal acts on impulse and instinct alone. Man must first be an animal to reach the state of overman; man must act on impulse, will, and instinct alone and then analyze them slowly.
The overman is a being that has overcome the human condition, and this is achieved through acts of will. The act of will in Nietzsche’s philosophy is the act of creation; it is the moment when man overcomes himself and becomes something more than he was before.
Nietzsche’s concept of the overman is a direct contradiction to the idea that man is an animal. Nietzsche believed that human beings were far more than animals, and his philosophy was based on this premise.
What Nietzsche Meant When He Said:
“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Meaning, Summary And Explanation
In this quote, Nietzsche uses the term man to refer to a rope, that is tied between the beast and the overman.
We usually think of ourselves as weak individuals who cannot bring change in society, but Nietzsche wanted us to see ourselves as something that is much larger than an individual and a part of a higher purpose to the world.
We are both the bridge and the rope. We are tied to a new world and we can create a bridge to that new world.
The beast that is tied to the rope can be described as the animal that lives in the cave. This beast lives on a completely different plane than the overman. This life is lived in a totally different manner than the life of the overman.
This beast does not live in accordance with the rules and morals of the overman. The beast does not know what it wants, and instead, it is ruled by its instincts.
The beast that lives is unable to find a way to live in the open. It is only when the beast is tied to a rope, that it can escape the cave and begin to live in the open.
We have all of the possibilities of becoming the overman. We have the choice of living our lives according to our desires and goals or according to the rules and laws that society has already set for us.
Here, we have to choose what we want to become or remain in our life; an animal, a man, or an overman.
Nietzsche argued that life is a type of ‘art,’ and we must be willing to create a work of art.
If we become a living work of art, then we will be able to use the work of art as a bridge between the world of the beast and the world of the overman.
We are given the opportunity to find the rope that ties us to the overman, but we are only given this chance if we are willing to seek out this truth.
In other words, Nietzsche believed that man must overcome his own nature to become something greater. He must transcend his animal instincts and become something more than just a creature of instinct.
The overman is a being who has transcended the limitations of man and has become something more. This bridge will allow a man to cross the abyss that separates him from the overman.
Zarathustra (the main character of the philosophical novel; Thus spake Zarathustra) had a strong will. He was aware that his own way was one of the true ways, and he did not want us to follow him. He wanted to create a new type of man and a new kind of society.
He believed that we should all go our own way. We should not allow ourselves to be controlled by society, and we should have our own rules and be our own masters.
If we do not, we will just be like every other person in society. We will all follow society’s rules. We will all live our lives like a machine or robots, doing whatever society wants us to do.
In society, everyone will be like everyone else, and nothing will change. The overman has to come out of society. He must come up with a new kind of society that is more worthy of himself.
A man can only be great if he makes a big change in himself. He will only be a true master if he starts to make his own rules.
Nietzsche: Why Man Should Become An Overman?
In his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche described the man as a “moral animal.” He believed that man was a weak and inferior creature in need of constant reassurance and a great deal of “power-love.”
To make sure of this power love, humans rely on moral codes and systems of rules that are invented by the powerful and then enforced by the weak people over the weak people.
According to Nietzsche, man is “a being who is not satisfied with himself, who is always in search of greater, higher and nobler goals, who has no true happiness except where he is on the way to something that is greater than himself, who is continually dissatisfied and discontent with himself.”
The “will to power” is the only true morality in the world. He stated that one should not be willing to take advantage of others, but one should be willing to take the greatest advantage of oneself.
The highest form of “will to power” is the “overman.” The “overman” is a superman who stands above the petty morality of conventional society. These supermen are the ones who are willing to do the most to their own advantage and growth.
Morality is not something that should be enforced from the outside by society. Instead, morality must be created from within ourselves by the individual and for the individual.
Nietzsche stated that when we are born, we are a “bundle of instincts” that are both noble and ignoble. These instincts must be tamed by a “higher” moral code of behavior.
We have the ability to develop or “become” the “overman.” We can develop our personalities in the way that best suits us.
To become the “overman,” we must be willing to risk our personal safety in order to have the power to change the world.
Because we cannot know what the “overman” will look like, we must create him within ourselves. We must also take responsibility, and not blame others for what we are.
The first step to becoming an Overman is to realize that we are already an Overman. We already have all the tools that we need to become one of the greatest Overmen.
The second step to becoming an Overman is, to be honest with yourself.
To be honest, we must be willing to face our faults and our weaknesses and recognize that we all have them.
To be honest, to be honest with ourselves is, to be honest with reality.
We must recognize that we are all imperfect, and we all can do better in some way, and in some way we are great.
Final Thoughts On Nietzsche: Why Man Is A Bridge Between Animal And Overman?
In the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the “overman” is a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is not an unreachable utopia, but something that can be achieved through hard work, self-realization, and self-overcoming.
The overman is a being who has transcended the limitations of the human condition and acquired a higher level of existence.
The overman is a goal worth striving for. It represents our highest potential as human beings.
In other words, man is constantly at risk of falling into the abyss and being destroyed.
What is great in man, according to Nietzsche, is that he has the ability to bridge the gap between these two states. This ability makes him both dangerous and necessary.
In other words, man is caught between two different stages of evolution. On the one hand, there is the animal, which is driven by instinct. On the other hand, there is the overman, which is driven by a strong will.
Man must have the will to overcome his human nature, and this is not an easy thing to do.
In order for a man to become overcome himself, he must be able to act even though he knows he is acting contrary to what his instincts demand of him. It is in this way that man must overcome his own nature.
Despite how we see ourselves as singular, our individuality is a state of consciousness that unites many diverse experiences of self. Just as you have these many versions of yourself — such as mother, daughter, aunt, sister, grandmother — so it is that the wider, unified level of consciousness knows All That Is Life as extensions of itself.
This unified, eternal state of consciousness is what religion calls God, but whereas religion has set “the divine” up as being both separate from — and above — us, we each retain the power to realize that we are this infinite level of consciousness.
We are eternal consciousness choosing to be human.
To be mortal isn’t to be “fallen” or “less than”. Mortality is not a mistake. It is the only thing that eternal consciousness — the immortal — desires. We each came here to experience being individuated and mortal. There are infinite, diverse forms for consciousness to experience. No form of mortality was designed to be experienced without end.
All experiences of mortality (which are a journey into forgetting) loop around and become experiences of remembering. This means that each of us will eventually remember that not only have we been every life on Earth, but we are also all the states of consciousness that exist outside of the human experience. This is the choice to wake up and remember that we are not only the individual we know ourselves to be, but we are also the consciousness that knows itself as the collective of all.
Beyond the individuation of our physicality, we are a single, unified, eternal state of consciousness.
The experience of this life is a gift that eternal consciousness gave to itself with infinite wisdom. Being a gift given with unconditional love, your life comes with no obligations or duties. You are here to be who you are, which is something you cannot help but be.
You will evolve, no matter what you do. It is a free choice as to whether or not you focus on the idea of awakening. But, in your choice to read this book, you are most probably someone who is choosing to awaken to your wider spiritual nature.
Spiritual awakening is not experienced by focusing away from what you are. It is a journey deep into the allowance of yourself to be whatever you most clearly feel yourself to be. It is through fearlessly being yourself that you will come to not only understand why you have given this life to yourself, but you will also remember the level of consciousness from which you chose it.
My writing expresses the experience of knowing that exists at that level of consciousness. Through it, I seek to offer a vision of spirituality and consciousness free of the fear, control, intolerance, and judgment of religion.
You are infinitely free consciousness and the only “devil” or “evil” is our fear of ourselves.
No devil to demonize. No savior to save you. No religion.
Be free by unashamedly being yourself.
A Definition of Consciousness
Consciousness is awareness of what is. ‘What is’ is everything in existence, including All That Is identified as past, present, future, perceptual, or imaginary. All consciousness, regardless of whether it is within a collective or individual experience of reality, experiences some form of self. These experiences of self that can be vastly different from our own.
The One Self or The One Consciousness refers to the self that arises from the totality of all consciousness in existence. All existence occurs within its perception. Human existence is the navigation of an individuated focus through the totality of its perception.
The One Consciousness = The One Self = All Consciousness = All Definitions = All That Is = Everything in Existence = The Tao = Source Consciousness = God*
*God is everything. God includes every concept of God. There is no opposite to God. God is not less than God when it chooses to experience itself as a human.
Example: To say, “I am The One Self” is to say that you know yourself to be that which is everything in existence. It is to know that every person can say, “I am The One Self.” To know this is to step outside of the personalization and possessiveness of individuality.
All separation is an illusion.
What appears as the solidity of the outer world only exists within perception. Perception exists within consciousness. Consciousness is that which is aware of perception and experiences presence through it.
How Consciousness Creates Individuality
Physical matter is created through a perceptual projection that creates the illusion of spatial separation. In just the same way that physical-space separates one thing from another, so linear-time is the illusion of temporal separation. Time and space are perceptual projections which create the experience of the outward reality that your experience of self is contained within.
Time-space is the primary form of separation used by consciousness to create experiences of individuality (such as being human).
The outer world and your physical body are the perceptual projection of a state of consciousness that is choosing to dream of being a physical, individuated self — a self that is contained within a world of consistent solidity. You witness this ability of your consciousness to create worlds every night when you dream. However, the waking dream of your life is governed by rules of persistence and linear consistency (rules we have chosen to experience while in human form).
Waking life is a dream with self-imposed consistency.
Consciousness knows it is not separate from anything in terms of either time or space. Therefore, to become an individual requires making the choice to become unconscious of how everything is the unified projection of a single consciousness. This choice for unconsciousness creates an experience of self that possesses its own unique perspective and thereby its own unique, unfolding experience of self.
Separation is a perceptual illusion experienced within consciousness. Physical matter and linear time are forms of separation. When not within the perception of separation — which is an illusion — all consciousness experiences itself as one.
A moment of human perception is an experience of partial consciousness because it is a slice of the total perception that exists within the unified consciousness. It is one of an infinite number of ‘momentary’ perceptions that you are sequentially moving through in your creation of a mortal self that lives within linear time.
You are the one consciousness in human form.
The one consciousness uses the illusion of separation to experience itself as many individuals.
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