Hexagram #37




It is racial cliche to talk about the Black Family. The romantic relationships turned to responsibility turn to battleground and cage. No doubt there are the beautiful women and men who have developed and nurtured "healthy" relationships for many years and serve as role models for us all, but I think the majority of them stay away from public professions of their love. They know the humility a serious relationship with one person produces.

To love someone is to gain sense of who you truly are in both your beauty and ugliness. In your beauty you find your power and strength to assist, aid, endure, and promote. In your ugliness you learn that the world is bigger even than your flaws, shortcomings, and periods of hopelessness.

In the Chinese Book of Wisdom the I-Ching hexegram #37 corresponds to household. The judgement reads perserverance of the woman furthers. The difficulty in applying this to contemporary society, esepcially within intellectual communities is difficult. The presence of countless single mom's, powerful divorce rates, misogyny, rape and other forms of abuse, violence, and confusion make it difficult to get at the role, duty, or responsibility assigned to a woman in a family. What makes matters even more difficult are the expressions of male dominated nonsense which can easily be adopted by men working out of patriarchy. War, violence, and aggressive Yang are the computer chips of our society. Men who seek power in the world outside the home must in some shape or form adopt these energies or at the least figure out ways to manage and adopt them. These objectives are no more selfish than women's quest for personal empowerment. Both men and women who are attached seek ranges of power in the interest of the survival of the family.

And then there is the yin cultivated in the men, the place where we are forced to bend when confrontating the Yang of the outside world.

Obviously men, cannot biologically have children. There is something simple and profound about this observation. To observe it without throwing it into the mix of power and politics is a difficult proposition. Gender studies, feminist studies, and good old fashioned patriarchy all have their approach, conclusions, and ideas connected to this simple fact. Couples negotiate the specifics.

My own personal marriage of almost twenty three years is neither badge of honor or blight of hell. It is simply a dynamic fact that is negotiated each and everyday with my wife, my children, and those members of our extended family who make up the relationship.

There are enough broken marriages in the African American community to produce an inverted celebrity status for those who remain married. One can put it down on the table that they are married as a means of gathering respect at the long wooden table of the community. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, family relationships teach important lessons about the range and realm of speech, promotion, and characterizations of one as an individual.

The inclusion of the household diagram within the I-Ching is itself a testament to the nature of family and it's relationship to the fundamental structure of society and the realm of science that governs the world of human relationships.

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