This is part of a Wednesday series on Goddess spirituality and political activism.
As the fall turns toward the winter solstice, it’s the time for dealing with losses. Maybe it’s just me, but I always seem to be going to funerals this time of year. And this year, other major losses have hit nationwide: the economic crash, and the theft of LGBTI people’s civil rights on Election Day.
So the stories this time of year are largely ones of grief and recovery. Even the almighty Isis could not escape.
Isis was worshiped over a period of more than three millennia, and her veneration spread from Egypt to Rome to the British Isles, so of course her stories are many and complex. Isis is the Goddess of life, the great magician, and the bringer of civilizing arts such as weaving, astrology, and agriculture. The best-known version of her story tells of her love for her brother/husband, the vegetation God Osiris . Two of their other siblings, Set and Nephthys , were also married.
Nephthys, the protector of the dead, wanted to have a child. But her husband Set was sterile (not surprising since he was the God of the desert). So Nephthys disguised herself as Isis, and seduced the fertile Osiris. When the infant Anubis was born, Nephthys persuaded Isis to pretend the baby was hers in order to escape Set’s wrath. Isis, who could not be angry at the creation of life, agreed to raise her husband’s child as her own.
Such secrets never stay secret, of course. Set didn’t reveal that he had found out. Instead, he created a gorgeous jeweled chest, and brought it to a feast, declaring that whoever fit it exactly could keep it. Of course, the chest was matched to Osiris’s measurements, taken in secret while he slept. When Osiris laid down in the box, Set’s followers swarmed into the room and held back the other deities while Set sealed Osiris inside the chest and carried it away.
Isis was pierced through with grief. Her wails echoed into the night. Her tears fell so hard that they caused the Nile to flood.
The hardest part was realizing that she had to go on.
With help from Nephthys, Isis began the arduous journey along the banks of the Nile, searching for the body of Osiris. At last she saw an arm extending from a thick nest of weeds. Her sandals flew from her feet as she ran toward it. But when she drew near, her throat closed in horror at what she saw.
It was only the arm.
Set had taken no chances: he had cut his brother’s body into fourteen pieces, and scattered them up and down the Nile.
What does a Goddess feel when she holds the severed limb of a loved one? The same thing an Iraqi mother does, I think. Weeping, Isis cradled the lifeless flesh of her beloved. Then Nephthys urged her on, and they resumed the search. Slowly, they found thirteen of the fourteen pieces. But the last piece, her husband’s sexual organ, was never found.
Isis reassembled the thirteen pieces. For the missing piece, she made a copy out of gold. Isis the Great Magician worked her magic over the body of Osiris, with divine power and a very human love. And Osiris revived, and together they conceived Horus , the falcon-headed God who would one day defeat Set.
Right now, with the change in administrations, we are struggling to put back together a country that has been torn into far more than fourteen pieces. An unjust war, the subversion of the rule of law, the undermining of environmental and civil rights protections. It’s an overwhelming task.
The re-membered Osiris is not the same as the one from those earlier, innocent days. There are losses that cannot be undone. First and foremost, the deaths: Americans, Iraqis, Afghanis, and others who followed us into a war based on lies. There are the visible wounds of lost limbs, and the less obvious ones of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And torture victims, even if they are released, will never be the same.
I realize that only in myths was there ever a golden age of innocence. There have been other shameful episodes in our country’s past. (For a stunning example, check out Winter Rabbit’s wrenching series on the genocide against American Indians.) Any movement toward healing requires that we look at the messy, ugly, shattered pieces of our history, and see them for what they are.
Part of the reason I’m a progressive is the belief that my country is better than what the last eight years have made it. At our best, we’ve stood up for the ideals of equality and basic human rights. At our best, we've been a haven for people fleeing persecution. We had a worldwide reputation as the good guys. The loss was far quicker than the rebuilding will be. But I come every day with the faith that we can rebuild, one piece at a time.
In an era of racism and economic disaster, on the brink of another war, Langston Hughes optimistically wrote, Let America Be America Again:
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
He dared to dream of an America re-membered and healed:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be!
A few months ago, Barack Obama stood in a stadium in Germany, packed with thousands of people who waved American flags and shouted, "USA! USA! USA!" They saw America becoming America again. I like to think that Langston was looking down and seeing it too.
Like Isis, when we put the pieces together, we will give birth to something powerful and new.