Two of the biggest mysteries that still keep us humans scratching our skulls are how male-female relationships got so complicated and what both genders can do to uncomplicate their interactions. I am glad to see that the conversations among women are continuing on this subject. Each adds new layers of insights and perspectives
The following is repeated from here, for those who don’t follow bIX’s blog. I couldn’t have said it better and I believe that it can’t be said often enough.
I’m not big on their rhetoric about using election Day to show that in the aftermath of 9/11 freedom is still alive and well, but I will nonetheless point you to Freedom’s Answer, because their mission is to increase voter turnout.
For me, the only connection to 9/11 should be the following.
For all you superficial patriots who hung flags on your car antennae (which then, not incidentally, gradually tattered and fell off to litter our nation’s roads) — you know, those of you who think you own the idea of being an American because you could fly the colors and sing the songs: Now is your time to put up or shut up. If you aren’t in the voting booth (real or merely metaphorical for those of us who, say, vote by mail) this November, then put away your flags and leave the room when the national anthem is played.
Now, you all know I’m no flag waver or anthem singer. But I’m also not fond of hypocrites. Patriotism by proxy — meaning dressing one’s life up in red, white, and blue in order to support other Americans, but all the while doing nothing yourself as an American — is not patriotism at all. In the end, it’s just consumerism. And status.
You want to be a patriot? Then get to work on it for real.
My therapist-shaman-spiritual seeker friend sent the following out in an email today. His words deserve a larger audience than the small group of friends with whom he shares his voice.
Dear Friends,
Last night, on the evening of Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of the Jewish
New Year, I made a difficult decision. After attending Rosh Hashonah
evening services, I decided not to attend today’s New Year’s day service.
A strange decision. In the annual Jewish spiritual cycle, this holiday
time begins a ten day period of soul-searching and introspection,
purification and reconciliation. It is meant to prepare us for our next
year of life by beginning that year cleansed, uplifted, unburdened, and
wiser from reflection on our mistakes and the ways we have hurt each
other. What better place than a synagogue, temple or church to practice
such introspection and contemplation?
Indeed, many of the words repeated in the prayer service, in fact
repeated for centuries, are meant to bring us to such a place of deep
internal reflection. We declare that “we consecrate God by our acts of
righteousness.” We declare the Divinity is the source or morality. We
affirm that “the illnesses of our world will be healed by those who drink
deep from ancient wells of wisdom.”
I strive to drink from those wells not just today but every day. I
strive to consecrate God by living righteously. The entire meaning and
motivations of all my professional activities as – psychotherapist,
growth facilitator, journey guide writer – are found in these goals. The
beautiful words in our traditional prayers remind me of my own deepest
motivations, and that they are watered by ancient wellsprings living in
Jewish and other religious thought. Then why am I home writing this
instead of in synagogue repeating the words in person with a few hundred
others, and in concert with Jews everywhere?
The answer is alarmingly simple. My friend, a Jewish lawyer who has
dedicated his life of professional service to crusading for social
justice, told me earlier this week: “I go to synagogue. I assume that
Judaism means something to the people attending services. But I don’t
see or feel what it means. I don’t see my neighbors rending their souls,
struggling with the big questions, applying these difficult spiritual and
philosophical questions to our daily personal and collective lives.”
Services too often substitute for rather than encourage the soul-rending
that needs to occur on these days. Religion, meant to be the soul’s
guide through the difficulties of life and living, becomes a substitute
rather than aid and encouragement to spirituality. My friend asked how
he could make the holiday truly spiritually alive, what he could read to
guide his soul in the process.
I, too, want to rend my soul on this day. In this brave new world we
live in, where we are in a new form of war without end, where our
political leadership chomps at the bit to plunge us into another
destructive and morally questionable war, where ecological, economic and
social decay threaten all of us on the entire planet daily, there is no
better, no more apt time to rend our souls, to ask how to live
righteously, to ask how to honor God and celebrate the creation. For the
meaning of the Rosh Hashonah holiday is just this. The holiday is the
mythic anniversary of the day of Creation. We celebrate it by working to
make ourselves morally clean so that we can be good stewards of this most
awesome gift of the Creator to us all.
With so much suffering, with such a degree of modern illness afflicting
us all, we must experience soul-rending. So, sadly, I stay home to rend
my soul in private contemplation because I do not experience that rending
occurring in the shared public arena. We are at war but we barely touch
its pain. We are about to go to another war but are not sharing our
terror. Our planet is frying, our fresh waters disappearing, yet we are
not agonizing over it and asking what we each can do as individuals, and
what we must do collectively, to help our beloved Earth heal. So how do
we celebrate and behave righteously toward the Creation? There is just
too much pressing our us, disturbing and threatening us, for today to be
a day of nicities: “Have a good year;” “Be kind to each other.” We must
ask much more difficult and terrifying and disturbing questions — of
ourselves, each other, and all our leaders. And we must demand a much
more difficult and uncomfortable search for answers.
I wish to go on with this reflection. I wish to apply the spiritual
demands of this holiday to our difficult political, social, environmental
questions. And I will. I will spend this holy day, the ten days of
repentance that follow, and the holiest day of Yom Kippur, in such
contemplation. I will ask about the unthinking sacrifices we are making
of our children and our earth — as indicated by the story of Abraham and
Isaac retold today. I will ask about how I individually and we
collectively must serve as good stewards of the Creation on this day we
celebrate its birthday and declare that spirituality and right moral
action are one and the same. I will personally apologize to those I have
wronged, and seek ways to stop further harm in my individual as well as
our collective lives. I will continue to dedicate myself, my work, my
life to ultimate concerns, remembering that power and money are just
tools to use for good or ill, and should never be pursuits in themselves.
I will tremble in righteous indignation at the daily abuse of our
freedom, and use of our power to abuse others and our planet. And I will
never agree to allow my children, yours, or distant strangers’ children,
to be sacrificed on the altar of our vanity and greed.
I will go on with these reflections in every way I can, hourly, daily,
yearly, and not just pay my public dues to the holiday and tradition by
taking an easy path. I ask, I implore each of you to do the same.
Thank you all for being my congregation of spiritual seekers,
soul-renders, and God-wrestlers on this anniversary of the day of
Creation. May you each and all have a year of blessings and meaning.
Sounds right to me.
Chris Locke is writing. Again. And ya
It all started as a not-to-be-taken seriously post about a prominent piece of female anatomy, but it triggered very serious blog conversations all over the place about sexism, feminism, femininity etc. etc. I was glad to see those conversations happen and I personally hope the thread continues as a way of clarifying how various of us women feel about ourselves as biological women. This is something we ought to be examining and sharing, and this is something men should be interested in hearing and responding to. It helps the genders to understand each other better.
This post on the issue by Andrea James is not the first of hers that made me sit up and take notice of the fact that this young woman has wisdom way beyond her years. Months ago, Andrea and I did a little cooperative playful conjuring as a way of giving a fellow blogger some moral support. I named her my Apprentice Crone, recognizing a shared interest in perceiving the ordinary magic inherent in our creative lives.
So, when Dorothea Salo referred in-not-terribly-positive tones to my Cronedom in one of her recent and excellent posts about her own experiences as a female-as-perceived-by-others, I felt prompted to defend my self-proclaimed title.
Just as many younger women are struggling to be recognized and respected for all that they are as women and not for how closely their physical appearance adheres to the Victoria Secrets stereotype, I
This was posted as a comment to my 9/3 post, but I think it deserves more visibility. It was posted by the author, who also is my kids’ Dad.
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Little girls are nice
but we do them wrong
fussing with their hair and dressing them up
like dolls —
teaching them from the start
they are playthings.
Better we should feed them
words and numbers and tools
to remind them
that before women, they are people.
Teach them love and caring and nurture, yes,
but not as the entirety of their being,
else those qualities become walls and prisons.
Give them, as well, wings
and teach them to fly —
in case later in life
someone builds walls around them.
Little girls are nice,
but daughters who are their soaring selves
are better.
“I sent you to college. You’re a teacher. You should be perfect.”
That’s what she said to me yesterday, my mother.
I don’t even remember what it was I did this time that didn’t meet with her approval. Not that it matters. I’ve spent my entire life repelling her disapprovals. But it does burn my butt that she still doesn’t get it.
Over on her weblog, Jeneane Sessum shares her current struggles to get beyond the load her mother laid on her. Mother-daughter stuff. Tough stuff.
I think I managed to do the mothering thing less destructively than my mother, although I certainly didn’t do it perfectly. Of course not.
Now, how does anyone out there know this? Haven’t a clue, but this issue of the dance magazine has been “put to bed” (that’s publishing talk. heh), so now I can resume some of my other life pursuits, like blogging.
Actually, while I haven’t been posting here, I’ve been commenting intently and intensely on various blog and email conversations about sexism. My ire is stirred by that issue because I belive that expressed sexist attitudes (whether voiced in jest, conscious intent or even unconscious intent) contribute to the tough row that women have to hoe in this world by adding to the impression that it’s OK to demean women.) So, when I read Jennifer Balderama’s posts on the subjects of feminism and strong women, I figured that giving those posts some additional visibility was a good way to relaunch myself into the blogmix of things.
And, while I’m on the subject of gender differences (yes, all of this sexism stuff is somehow based in the different ways each gender needs to perceive the other, I believe), I found this very relevant passage in a “trashy” novel I just finished reading