As the sunlight rapidly disappears from our daily lives, the cold nights bring patches of frost and while my breath forms mist in the cool air during my walk to work. With the coldness, the leaves of some trees are changing into red, yellow, and orange showing as spots of color among the still green hillsides.
As we enter the Halloween season, the cooling days and diminishing light reminds us that the Earth is falling asleep. In the long, slow dusk, the raspy songs of a few remaining insects call out for mates prior to ending their very short lives in the hardships of the coming cold darkness. The ghosts and goblins that are the childhood stories harbor the approaching season of death for animals like us.

At the farmers market and produce auction, fall harvests are still abundant with mums, pumpkins, and eggplants, along with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, winter squash, and other crops suitable for storage. With the fleeting abundance soon to become the barren ground offering scant food for hungry animals, the harvest season is marked by animals like us storing food. A squirrel diligently ate on and off for ten days a small pumpkin on our porch until it finally could gorge itself on the seeds at the pumpkin’s center. Meanwhile, overpopulated deer in our neighborhood are showing their ribs as they scrounge for food. Without efficient predators like wolves and many more coyotes, the deer overeat the green world around them, like gluttonous humans consuming the Earth.

The fall weather has allowed my wife and I perfect weather for hosting get togethers on our patio. Despite the beautiful weather, during a recent visit with a friend, the conversation turned to patriarchy, war, and women that helped me clarify for my understanding of the past and present human world.

Then and now, the mother and family community is central to the continuing of life through eons of time. From the central community, males would leave to hunt and sometimes protect the others. Like many species, men in our species are more expendable because the laws of fertility dictate that the more women in a community, the more babies will be born. Only a few men are truly needed, so fertility favors men taking lethal risks while women and children are to be safer—which is true in healthy communities embedded in nature, but not in patriarchy.

In the mother and family centered community love is a pre-eminent energy. When I was a teenager decades ago, a girl told me that she thought, “god is love.” When many people speak of their “god” they mean a mysterious, influential energy that acts out of love, creating phenomena we witness in the love of partners, children, families, friends, and others. Natural justice and the Covenant of Good Works are expressions of the energy of love that stems from what goes around coming around. In a very real way, when we experience love with our partners, our family, and others, we are experiencing the presence that people think of as evidence of god.

In prehistory, on the outskirts of these loving communities, males sometimes fought with outsiders over territory. Occasionally, lethal skirmishes like these have been seen in chimpanzees, with males sneaking into the territory of other groups and attacking and killing individuals. But the lethal males did not turn their furor on the families in their communities; love channeled their bloodlust for power-over and violence away from this all important center.

In opposition to the deity of love, the males’ bloodlust for violence and power-over is something of an original sin. But unlike the patriarchal concept of original sin, it is not in everyone, nor in the same degree; particularly, it is more common and in a much greater degree in men than women.

While some human communities like the Mbutu in the Ituri rainforest and the Kung San in the Kalahari, appear to have not practiced war in the millennia before Europeans invaded their lands, as human populations grew, the border skirmishes apparently turned into ongoing battles, with deaths on both sides traumatizing the warriors. In these communities, the men became bullies who invaded and brutalized the sacred and essential mother and family community.

Patriarchy emerged out of the sin of bloodlust, invading and largely destroying the loving community centered on the mother and family. Humanity was taken far from the center of the Earthly river of life as violent patriarchs invaded the Earth to expand their power-over-others.

In our contemporary personal world, many men and some women, also seek power-over others. Some do this directly as bullies who hit their partners and children or who use their money or the glamour of being a man to emotionally or verbally abuse people around them. For sensitive people seeking peaceful, loving harmony, one of the greatest challenges we face is creating boundaries that allow us to build families and communities that exclude these bullies, whether they abuse partners, children, vulnerable minorities, or women.

In abusive families, bullies—parents, older siblings, and others—harm sensitive people and other dependent people. As young adults sensitive people face both remaining quiet about the harm we’ve experienced and entering romantic relationships, friendships, and work relationships that threaten to repeat the harm. Sensitive people, trying to practice compassion and understanding, often fall victim to not creating strong boundaries with bullies, whether they are in our original families or our adult community.

The abuse and harm that has become embedded in families and communities in patriarchy threatens our place in the Earthly river of life. Allowing bullies—whether in our larger world, our community, or our families—into our lives disrupts the loving center of home and family. If lucky, we can successfully escape these traps through strong friends, counselors, and sometimes crisis centers that help us create the boundaries we need.

Taking in these lessons as a grandparent, I am trying to build an empowered, loving relationship for my granddaughter with me. I do this by obeying her wishes, even if it may be part of a game. I ask her when I am leaving, “Can I kiss you on the forehead?”

“Noooo!” she always says.

“Okay,” I reply, “What you say goes. I love you.”

It is crucial to me that she has a relationship with a man and authority figure who from her earliest memories empowers her and makes her as much of an equal as possible. This means less opportunities for me to play with her and be affectionate, but ensures the contact is her choice.

Recently, I was part of her playtime with friends and family in the hollow behind our house. She spent a lot of time with me, holding my hand to go up and down steep stairs and slopes, running to me for safety as she and the other youngsters played chase. At the end of the day, she asked for me to read her Beatrix Potter stories while she laid her head on my shoulder. It was the first time in over a year that I had read her a story and it was the highlight of my week. Her relationship of empowerment with me and others in our family may help her avoid the harm that so many children, women and some men endure in our personal lives. In doing so, she will move closer to the loving center of the river of life that creates spiritual meaning and bliss in our lives.