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Make Love to Life as if It Were Your Beloved

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Maui, Highway on the Back-side

Make love to Life today as if It were your Beloved, for It Is.

We live in an erotic world, a world full of the sensual. We are sensual beings. When we are here, in this moment, we experience life by way of our senses. This is the nature of the sensual, experiencing life through one’s senses.

The word erotic might seem strange to describe our physical world, but when you really open to and receive Life into your senses, a natural love pours forth into you and from you, a connection between the sacred in you and the sacred in all of life.

The origin of ‘erotic’:
1615–25; < Gk erōtikós of love, caused by love, given to love, equiv. to erōt- (s. of érōs) Eros + -ikos -ic

This world, this Life that we are swimming in is ’caused by love’, is ‘given to love’, it IS erotic in the largest and deepest sense. We are swimming in love, we breathe it into our cells with each breath we take in, and we breathe love out into the world with each breath out. We take love in with our eyes, when we really look, and when we are open to it, we give the look of love back to Life as It holds us in It’s Gaze. The other senses are no different – they are the vehicle to give and receive love to the All that holds us in each moment.

I took a moment to look the word sensual up in the dictionary:

senâ‹…suâ‹…al

–adjective

1. pertaining to, inclined to, or preoccupied with the gratification of the senses or appetites; carnal; fleshly.
2. lacking in moral restraints; lewd or unchaste.
3. arousing or exciting the senses or appetites.
4. worldly; materialistic; irreligious.
5. of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory.
6. pertaining to the philosophical doctrine of sensationalism.

______________________________________

Some of these simply describe the simple nature of the word: pertaining to the senses. Others contain judgment, judgment that you have probably grown up with and internalized, because we live in a culture that equates sensuality with sex, and the culture has much judgment and condemnation about sex and pleasure as well.  Sometimes, we are made to feel that our love of the sensual is bad or wrong, or that we are bad for enjoying pleasure.

But, what if that judgment was the illusion and the reality what you experience through your senses? What if Life expressing itself through your sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing is reality, and the illusion is the judgment that your mind attaches to your experience and thoughts? How might your relationship to the present moment be different?

What if Life were your Beloved?

Stop for a moment and take Life in through your senses. Be with Life as you are with a Beloved, someone you feel unconditional love for. Open to It. Receive It. Feel Life caressing you, tenderly, not wanting anything from you except your undivided attention, your unconditional love, your rapture with its exquisite beauty and simplicity. As you receive It, simply notice how you feel.

Now, for just a moment, make love to it. Caress it back with your eyes, your ears, your heart, your touch. Simply allow yourself to love it without judgment, to receive it without aversion, and to witness the miraculous mystery that It is and that You are.

How might your day be different if you made love to Life in each moment, awaiting Its expression as if awaiting a beloved’s embrace?

Spend today, and perhaps tomorrow and this week, (maybe even the rest of your life) making love to Life. I would love to hear what you discover.

With love and great respect,

Julie

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Female Creative Power

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“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix

Jimi was pretty wise. Life is Love and Love is Life. There is no difference. The force that creates is love, it is life force, and it is nothing like the pretty picture we humans have been painted. It is powerful beyond measure, and it scares the hell out of us.

All we know of power in our minds is what we’ve been conditioned to believe. This conditioning is what we have been ‘taught’ by others, by their actions and how they have treated us. We, in turn, have ingested this conditioned worldview about what power is and the effects of power.

When I speak of power to women, of stepping into our power, of becoming more powerful, many women immediately resist the idea of owning their own power. When they speak of the reasons why, it is because they see power as a bad thing. They see power as something that oppresses, degrades, imprisons and destroys. They speak of the way power has been used in their lifetimes to maintain a status quo that keeps an elite group of people powerful, while denying vital life-sustaining resources to others. They cringe at the thought of being powerful if it means they must be like those they have witnessed wielding power.

For us to step into our power as women, we must look to something else to know what true power is, and that something is Life, a power that flows out from within.

When I think of life force, the first thing that comes to mind is a seedling growing out of the ground. Imagine what force it takes for the tiny seedling to push its way through the dirt, through everything that stands in its way of reaching the light. The force that fuels the seedling to reach for the sun is Life finding its way.

Life finding its way is power, power from within, power rising up out of the dark, the power of life exploding into existence.

If you look at the dictionary definitions, there are a ton of definitions for the word power. Words can only point to something, and when we try to use words with each other, more often than not what a word points to for me might be very (or even slightly) different for you. In addition, many words hold memories of our experiences that we attached to the word, and with a loaded word like power, this is especially true.

If we, as women, step into our power, we must first be wise and conscious of our intentions and of the source of our power. We could simply imitate what we’ve seen in this male-centric world, but then we would simply be creating more of what we already have.

Power over others, the way we have been conditioned to see power used, serves to sustain separation and suffering. Utilizing power to keep others powerless ultimately keeps us all powerless and separate. Just look at our world today. The world of human beings is filled with separation, loneliness, and violence. This is the kind of power that keeps many women from wanting to be powerful, or even believing they can be powerful.

Instead, let’s engage our wisdom to tap into what we instinctively and intuitively know about power. When we consciously look at what we know to be true in our experience, we bring this knowing into wisdom, and that sources generative power from within.

Women have been the power source and creative agents of the continuation of the human species from the beginning. Without a womb, humans would not exist.

I have had the glorious opportunity to witness the birth of two of my grandchildren. I have two daughters and they are both now mothers. To witness labor and birth is to witness true power, the power of Life giving birth to itself.

In labor, a woman surrenders to the powerful forces of Life finding its way into life, into light from out of the dark. If you have given birth or have witnessed it, you know what I mean. If the mother-to-be surrenders and works with the powerful forces that are working within her, Life will do what it does so well…bring the new baby into existence. If she struggles with the process, something we humans do on a daily basis, the process can be more painful, but the process continues anyway, in spite of her struggling.

Life force is always flowing, finding its way. If we don’t align with it, life still flows but we find it much more painful, in so many ways.

When we align with the force of life, we are no longer trying to resist our soul’s natural expression. This life force is our creativity. When we express it, without resistance, what we express is beautiful and powerful beyond measure.

This power frightens us because our rational mind is not in control of it. We want to control it but we can’t. When we try to control it by resisting it, we only make ourselves sick. Consider how painful childbirth could be if the mother-to-be actively resisted the baby coming into being.

The really important piece here is to learn to trust this power, this expression, this creative life force. To have faith in it is to surrender to the natural expression of power, a power that sustains all of life.

If you have never birthed a baby, please don’t listen to the cultural forces that tell you you’re not a mother, and you can’t be fulfilled without being a mother. When I use this example in courses I teach, it can be emotionally difficult for women who have not birthed a child. We, as women, must come to honor the fact that we are all mothers. Women can birth so much more than babies, and we do it all the time. We can mother more than just our own physical babies, and the ability to truly love all of life unconditionally is the power that flows out from within.

I have used the example of childbirth purposely here, because women’s bodies know this process. A woman’s body, regardless of whether or not she ever physically gives birth to a child, contains the intelligent substance and process to create and grow new life and to bring it into being. This powerful process is completely mysterious to our rational minds. Our minds will never figure out how this works…hence the mystery. But, when we honor our bodies, and the intelligent mystery within, we align with the life force that engages this mysterious creative process inherently available to women.

Knowing this and experiencing it within brings wisdom, wisdom that is needed NOW.

By aligning with the power within, by this mysterious life force that is our creativity, we are capable of growing and birthing that which wants to be created, that life force that is finding its way. This is the power we must step into as women. This is the power of life-sustaining creativity. It’s generative in that it supports life, nurtures the mystery that is life, that is love, that is the most powerful force because it is existence itself.

Can you imagine how things might shift if we realized this power within that is yearning to flow out into the world?

Can you imagine what might be created if we held all the world in the center of our hearts, hearts that are aligned with this creativity?

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To Sweat IS to Glisten

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“Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, Women Glisten” ~ Grandma

Yes, this is what my grandmother would say to me when I was young. You see, I was one of these kids who would go outside to play, and within 10 minutes my coat would be off and I would have a line of sweat all the way across my upper lip. I loved to play and I loved to play hard! There was no doing things half-way for this girl.  Of course, you can imagine what my grandmother thought of that. She was a product of her times. I am sure she was told that women ‘glisten’ by her mother (or come to think of it, maybe her father).

Most of us women learn at some point that it isn’t lady-like to sweat, regardless of what name we give it. But, there’s nothing like a GOOD SWEAT. I was engaged in a delightful email conversation with my good friend Ellie this morning, and we shared what a great sweat we had just enjoyed. She’s a runner and mentioned that she had a wonderful run this morning that was “delicious…fresh air, orange sky & lots of sweat — the stuff that makes me happy most mornings”. I responded to her about my extraordinarily sweaty dance yesterday morning where, once again, I played hard…or I should say danced hard. I ended the two-plus hours of straight dancing INCREDIBLY SWEATY, and I felt absolutely and utterly clean and light from the inside out for the rest of the day.

I dance the 5Rhythms (developed by Gabrielle Roth), and on Sunday mornings I dance with 149 other beautiful souls in a two-hour silent practice called Sweat Your Prayers…and we do. We sweat. I do seem to sweat more than most of the others… something I guess I am used to since childhood, but I notice I sweat a LOT MORE than the other women. This used to bother me, until I realized I was holding myself back from fully diving into my practice.

As I dive deeper into the practice, I realize I am dancing much more deeply grounded, deep down in my legs, pelvis and core. And when I do, I sweat unabashedly. Heat gets generated, toxins are released, and I feel clean and light.

My friend Ellie says, “Isn’t sweating the BEST? It’s so under-appreciated. One of the main reasons I love running is the sweat factor…major cleansing from the inside out!. Funny, I use to sweat a lot during Bikram, but it wasn’t as satisfying a sweat.”

I concur! In my almost two-years of doing Bikram, I loved the sweating, but it wasn’t as satisfying. I wonder if that’s because when I dance, I am generating all the heat from within my body, dancing from deep within my core. The room certainly isn’t heated, although with 149 other people dancing in close proximity, there’s a lot of heat being generated.

So are you wondering yet, why I’m writing about SWEAT on Unabashedly Female? In corresponding with Ellie, I realized how much women are taught, at least in my day, that sweating wasn’t ‘lady-like’. I can STILL hear my grandmother (and mother’s) words.

But, I know how healthy and satisfying a GOOD SWEAT can be; AND, I wasn’t being me, wasn’t really dancing MY dance when I was holding back because of any old leftover worries about being TOO SWEATY. When I dance deeply, I invite others to do the same. When I sweat, I am IN MY BODY, loving the experience.

To sweat IS to glisten!

Being unabashedly sweaty is running/dancing/yogaing/etc. with full-on engagement. It’s about loving life and learning to love ourselves enough to embrace the gift of a GOOD SWEATY GLISTEN.

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Independence Day for All

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On the 4th of July, Independence Day in America, we celebrate our independence and the birth of our country. In the spirit of independence for all, I want to celebrate the fire and passion of the soft power and green revolution in Iran…as well as in all places where people are fighting for their right to vote, their right to speak, their right to freedom of expression.

Soft Power is a term that’s been in the news since the Iranian election and the protests in its wake. In PeaceXPeace’s blog, Week X Week, Mary Liston Liepold’s post of July 1, Peace The Soft Power of Iran’s Green Revolution, describes soft power and the velvet revolution in Iran:

“Governments aren’t good at soft power; their feet are too big. It’s exactly the right size for citizens like us. Our Sudanese friend Dalia Haj-Omar reports seeing these words on a protest sign: “Calmness, Hope, & Patience: The Keys to a Green Revolution.””

Along with calmness, hope and patience, I would suggest determination, fire, wisdom and heart. Soft power is fueled by the deeply profound outrage and determination found in women, when they reach the point of “Enough is enough”. And, women all over the world are reaching this point.

In the patriarchy, women have been conditioned to be afraid to cross the line. In her incredible book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions, Miriam Greenspan speaks of this line that women dare not cross.

“Fear for women is not an enemy to be conquered but a warning track that says: Go no further. It is the demarcation line that points to the bounds of possibility and permissible behavior. If you’re a woman and you don’t use fear to limit yourself, there is an implicit threat of violence.”

The “powers that be” (in Iran and all over the world) don’t want the status quo upset, and women are conditioned to not upset the status quo. This has kept us in line, or I should say “behind the line” in the past. However, the women of Iran are no longer behind the line. The women in Iran, and many other parts around the world, are fighting with soft power every day. They have decided to cross this line of demarcation. They are willing to upset the status quo.

Here’s the question I am holding: What does it take to push us past the point of fear, past the point where we are no longer stopped by this conditioned implicit threat of violence? What does it take to say, “Enough is enough”?

Women’s second-class status here in the west is not as obvious as it is in many other cultures. It’s easier to keep a blind eye to it here. In Iran, and in other places where women have risen up to fight against their lack of rights, it is much more obvious. And, it’s obvious to women here in the West that other women around the world face much more serious, and consequential, attacks on their personhood.

How can we develop the solidarity necessary in order to galvanize us to stand with our sisters? How can we link with each other across the miles to help us to know we stand united? What kind of infrastructure do we need to support our solidarity?

Peace X Peace has women’s circles for just this reason, and other ‘Networks of Grace’ (a term coined by Andrew Harvey) are possible as well, through the Internet and other channels.

I’d love to know how you feel about this and what vision you might hold for sisterly solidarity in the service of birthing a new, profoundly loving and compassionate consciousness.

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Letting Go and Letting In

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hydrangea.jpg

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my Mother’s death.  It’s so hard to believe it’s been one year. I remember I couldn’t write for a while after she died. It was as if things needed to settle inside me. No, settle isn’t quite right. Things needed to move around, push their way out, burrow deep inside, get all mixed around, catywampus-sideways…everything just had to be left alone to be inside me. One thing I have become all-too-familiar with is the need for grief to be welcomed and befriended. It is an intelligent process, grief. I have experienced that when you open to it, don’t rush it, don’t fight it, even befriend it by giving in to it and entering the darkness of it with trust, it will move you, it will shake you, it will bring you somewhere out the other side of the darkness, somewhere new that you never expected.

Mom’s death was a lesson in letting go on so many levels. Letting go of my longing for her to be cured of her cancer, letting go of her being open to talking about her death, letting go of being able to say good-bye in the way I wanted to, letting go of wanting to be by her side at the moment she passed, letting go of all the things I thought I still needed from her as my mother. One big-time letting go.

And now it’s one year later. I find I am still letting go. I am letting go of our culture’s taboo on discussing death and sharing grief. I am letting go of the expectations that we are only supposed to grieve for a set period of time and then if we don’t move on we’re ‘not normal’. I’m letting go of the culture’s obsession with the objectification of a woman’s body, as if it existed solely for sexual gratification. And, I am letting go of the societal voices that ‘honor’ mothers on the surface, and treat mothers with disdain and women with second-class status.

As I wrote in a post last year, as my mother died, I felt a deep painful tearing in my body, right at the core. It felt as though my connection with my mother (the most primal connection I had) was being severed as she prepared to die. The pain seared in my core, down deep at the base of my body. It was as if I could feel her leaving by way of the pain in my own body.

Then, after she died, I sat with her body for a long time. I felt awe in the presence of her body, the body that nourished me and delivered me into this world. I felt gratitude for all she did in her life to provide for me, to keep me safe, to usher me into adulthood. I felt compassion for her foibles and humanness, a humanness that I had once expected to be perfection. Yet, there in the moments following her death, I was captivated by the ephemeral nature of this imperfect humanness for I knew, with her life force no longer there, her body was already beginning its way to non-existence.

Over this past year, I have come to know a strong connection between my mother and my own body. This connection lies at the heart of being human. We are fed by our mother, both inside her and once we are born. Her body is the vessel that holds us as we grow from being a few cells to a baby big enough to make our way into the world. She sustains us. During this time in the womb, she is all that we know.

This connection is primal. It is a connection to more than just mother. It’s a connection to the Universal Mother and to the Earth. This Earth is the vessel that sustains us as we move throughout our life. She provides for us. She nourishes us. While life can be harsh, without the Earth, we would not be.

We lose our connection because we are conditioned to believe we must let go of mother to be strong, independent individuals in our western culture. We also learn to blame mother for most everything that wasn’t right in our childhood. Mothers take the brunt of blame. Mothers are taken for granted. Mothers learn to internalize this blame.

It’s not about believing that mothers can do no wrong. Rather, despite the ways in which you don’t see eye-to-eye with mom, and regardless of whatever story you tell about your mother, can you find and feel your heart’s deepest gratitude to your mother for carrying you and birthing you? Because, that Mother, the mother that nourished and sustained you, is the same Mother that sustains all of life. The substance that fuels a mother’s capacity to nourish a baby into existence is the same substance that fuels all of existence.

What conscious grieving of my mother’s death has taught me is the profound, yet basic connection between awe and gratitude for my mother and the gift of life she gave me. It has strengthened my connection to my own body and to the Earth, and to all of life. And, it has brought me to the wisdom that comes from knowing this same substance is within me as a woman.

This substance allows for a beautiful and mysterious connection between women. We don’t have to be mothers to know this connection. It just is. This substance connects us with the Earth, with nature, and with the sacredness of life itself.

I don’t know what sharing this with you will bring, I only know that now knowing this has awakened reverence and awe for my mother, my daughters, my sisters, my nieces, and all women; my grandchildren and all children; my father, my partner Jeff, my sons-in-law, my nephews, and all men; and all of life. That’s been the gift for me that lies in knowing the fullness of my mother’s humanness, as well as the sacred nature of her female creativity.

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Chaos, Creativity & Leadership

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Chaos is ushering us into a whole new level of creative thinking that comes from deep within our intuitive, instinctive resources. ~Gabrielle Roth

This is wild creativity, a creativity that comes from deep within our bodies and hearts. In her article on the dancing path, Gabrielle Roth so beautifully expresses what is at the core of wild creativity. It is a creative ‘thinking’ that doesn’t come from thought. Rather, it comes from deep within the resources that are always available to us when we are open to our deeper nature. Wild, intuitive and instinctive, this creativity is chaotic and feral. It must be undomesticated, set loose from the dogma and ideology that keeps us tied to the old outdated, outworn system of the last few thousand years.

No longer can we simply engage with creativity as artistic talent or an intellectual premise that we begrudgingly entertain so that we’ll continue to build a better mousetrap so we can keep the shareholders happy.

In facilitating creativity courses over many years, my work has been with groups and individuals that range from top corporate 50 clients to families affected directly by 9/11, from students at Stanford University to individuals from all walks of life. All of my clients and students were looking to find some way to navigate times of great ambiguity and change.

Within their business structures, corporate clients were facing new initiatives that required radically new ways of approach, because the systems they had created no longer worked with what they were being required to do. They were being called to rely on something else, something that allowed them to navigate new waters that they were completely unfamiliar with.

Family members who had lost loved ones in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, were thrown into a new life they neither asked for nor wanted. Yet, they had to move forward, most of them new single mothers with children devastated by what had happened.

The Stanford students were of two kinds. One group was non-traditional undergraduates, who had transferred from other schools and were of a non-traditional age. Their situation required that they find their bearings in an intensely academic setting where the vast majority of students had followed the traditional trajectory that students of elite schools must do. These non-traditional students had to merge with the population, while coming to understand that the gifts they brought were of benefit to all they would meet. It wasn’t about losing themselves or their history; it was about claiming their originality and uniqueness, which is the essence of ones personal creativity.

The other group of students have been part of the Creativity and Leadership course I teach every fall at Stanford Continuing Education. These students come from all different cultures and countries. They work by day and learn at night. And, they are fully engaged in learning how to tap into this creative resource within, knowing that right now, in these times, what is needed is a new way to engage in business.

And, the individuals I have worked with all came to me because something was calling them to step out into a new direction, a direction that did not logically follow from where they had been.
All of these people were seeking something that could guide them in these times of change, times of what we might call chaos. And, more and more people are finding these times chaotic.

Things are shifting on a grand level. No longer do the old ways of doing things work. If we try to use the old ways in these new times, it’s like trying to dance with your feet shackled to the floor.

In these times of change, it can be helpful to remember or discover what it is we trust in. Now this isn’t trust as in a belief we hold or a dogma we learned, this is a trust that is with us always, one that we know from experience. When we are moving in the flux and flow of life, what we trust in must come from within us, or else, when we try to move, whatever we are trusting in outside of ourselves, will not be where we now find ourselves.

This that we trust from within is the very thing that has helped us navigate times of change, times that we have experienced throughout our entire lives, for we have always been in change. What is this? It is our personal internal creativity. This is the nature we humans are, the process we naturally move with when our minds don’t know how to manage the change.

This creative process is so natural and ordinary that most of the time we don’t even realize we are utilizing it. It can be a knowing that comes out of the blue. It can be an intuitive hit that registers in our gut. It can be as simple as pure instinct. The important thing to realize is that it is our nature, for when you realize this, you realize you are creative by birth, it is your birthright and it is always available to you.

As the current societal paradigm continues to dissolve, it is becoming more and more important that we each awaken to this creative nature within. We are being invited to fully awaken to and get comfortable with this creative nature.

I’d love to know your thoughts, so please leave a comment…

Julie

If you are interested in reading more, a new ebook is forthcoming on the topic of wild creativity. Contact me if you are interested in receiving it when it becomes available.
juliedaley (at) gmail.com

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Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love

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 “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi

This is the first of a series of posts on this topic of Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love.

To be a leader, one must truly feel what others are feeling. To be a leader, one must be able to truly love those she leads. How do we learn this most necessary trait? By feeling, deeply, the depth of our own experience. By allowing our own hearts to break. Many spiritual teachers speak of the necessity of allowing one’s heart to break open. It’s not that the heart will break. It cannot break. It must, however, break open, meaning that all the bindings that have grown around one’s heart must give way so that the heart can thrive in its natural expansiveness. When one’s heart is free to be, it is as large, and as expansive, as the whole of the Universe.

Feeling the depths of shame and humiliation from our own experience of being marginalized, disrespected and humiliated generationally is key to women waking up to our fullness and wholeness. Both our lightness and our darkness must be brought back into consciousness if we are to be wholly female and embody the sacred feminine that we are.

Every midwife knows
that not until a mother’s womb
softens from the pain of labour
will a way unfold
and the infant find that opening to be born.
Oh friend!
There is treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child.
Listen.
All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives are saying,
welcome this pain.
It opens the dark passage of Grace.

~Rumi

Opening to the pain of our experience as women, individually and collectively, is our passage to Grace. It is paramount that we open ourselves to feel, deeply feel, that which has been projected onto us over the centuries of oppression. There are many layers to this feeling. How much of our anger, shame and disowned power can accumulate before the dam breaks? We can use this pain as the way into Grace, the way into the opened heart, the way into the depths of our humanity. This humanity has become ripe and fragrant with our own capacity to walk side by side men, no longer simply a complement or accessory, but rejoicing in our sovereignty and self respect.

When we are able to feel the depths of what has been internalized within our own beings through the generational oppression, our hearts will move into an awakened state of love for ourselves, for other women, for men, for all of life. And, when we come to embody this love fully, for ourselves, and for others, every cell of our being will be filled with Grace.

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The Original Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870

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Julia Ward Howe

To all women, to all men, and to all of Life, I offer you the original Mother’s Day proclamation of 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. Read it and let is wash over you. Take it in and see what comes from it.

I shared this on Facebook, and received many wonderful responses. One response was from my Aunt, a strong vibrant woman. She recognized her own voice in Howe’s and could see this voice in all women; and, she also feels gratitude for all the men in her life that have served when called.

I mention this because I feel both are true. Neither sentiment negates the other. We live in a world of paradox. While we can hold firmly to the knowing that we can have a world in which peace truly exists, we also can honor those who have fought for freedom and justice. There is only one answer to it all – Love, unconditional love.

Sometimes that love is soft, sometimes it is fierce, but hopefully we can all find a way to the love that is unconditional, for all that is, for all of life, for the depth and breadth of how Life reveals itself. If it is all One, then Love means to love it all, unconditionally, while allowing your own being to move towards that which you know from deep within your self is True in every cell of your being.
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

thanks to Jonathan Klate, of Amherst, MA, for sharing this.

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Woeser, a Woman Willing to Write the Truth

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WOESER, a Tibetan poet and blogger, is struggling for visibility. In today’s New York Times This Saturday Profile, Woeser (going by a single name as is tradition in Tibet) is highlighted as a Chinese woman of Tibetan ancestry who discovered her roots and moved back to Tibet. She began to research the history between Tibet and China and began blogging and writing about what she saw was happening. In 2003, her first book, Notes on Tibet, was published and quickly sold it. But before the second run could be printed, the Chinese government banned the book.

Needless to say, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to silence her. They have blocked her blogs and her travels to Tibet are scrutinized.

From the Times, ‘Despite her relatively high profile both inside and outside China, she is well aware that her liberty is fragile. Since 2004 she has been waiting for a passport, which would allow her to travel and speak abroad.

“I feel so insecure inside,” she said. “I feel like I’m sitting on the edge of a cliff and I could fall down at any moment.”’

I feel great respect for Woeser for her willingness to write the truth as she sees it, regardless of the dangers she faces in direct response of her doing so. She is honoring what she knows to be true from within her, finding the courage to keep going in the face of strong condemnation from the Chinese government.

More and more women are finding the courage to step forth and speak out. I feel it is of utmost importance that we support these women in solidarity…all of us, both women and men. Women such as Woeser are exhibiting leadership of a new kind, leadership that comes from listening to what one knows to be true deep within and having the courage to express it from the heart.

What can we do to support Woeser in her vision to travel and speak in other parts of the world? I welcome your comments.

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Standing Out

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Tulip A friend posted this quote on FaceBook this morning, and I just had to share it here.

“Why are you trying to fit in when you were born to stand out?” ~ From the movie, What A Girl Wants  

I like to think of standing out as simply being what you are, the truth of what you really are. The ego is all about hiding or ‘being seen’, but there is another alternative…simply being true to your own being, without worrying about what others think of you.

A teacher of mine, Aydahshanti, says freedom only comes when we allow others to have their own opinion of us, without worrying about changing it or controlling it. This leaves us free to simply be. The tulip above, one of many I had in the house over Easter, is a great example of this. It is standing out, being itself, being beautiful and vibrantly colorful. It is simply being what it is.

What if you were to allow yourself to be unabashedly you? and, of course, unabashedly female!

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