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       # 2023-08-22 - Restoring Ourselves to Beauty
       
       Interesting excerpt from Blossom of Bone by Randy P. Conner:
       
       Holger Kalweit, who compares shamanic experiences cross-culturally,
       explains that they "invoke a deautomization of ordinary
       consciousness."  He continues, "A shamanic technique may be anything
       that disrupts and confuses the normal stream of thoughts, the
       habitual experience of the emotions."  In certain ways, the process
       of coming out as a gay person resembles the deautomization process
       undertaken by the shaman.
       
       The patriarchal male body is a weapon, a suit of armor, a machine. 
       Like the female body in patriarchal ideology, it is also an object. 
       We seek to reclaim its fluidity, its tenderness, its wholeness, what
       some have chosen to describe as its femininity, its androgyny.
       
       [Rob] Dobson suggests that dancing helps loosen patriarchy's chains,
       inspires us to reclaim and celebrate our bodies, and opens the door
       to new worlds.  "May we reclaim our bodies from the culture which
       has tried to possess them for so long," he chants, "May we restore
       ourselves to beauty."
       
       [
       For some reason this brings to mind another quote:
       "You don't have a soul.  You ARE a soul.  You HAVE a body."
       ]
       
       From:   Blossom of Bone by Randy P. Conner
       author: Conner, Randy P.
 (HTM) detail: https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/randy-conner
       LOC:    BL65.H64 C66
       tags:   book,non-fiction,queer
       title:  Blossom of Bone
       
       # Tags
       
 (DIR) book
 (DIR) non-fiction
 (DIR) queer