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So Many Silences – part five

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“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you….

What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”
~ Audre Lorde

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Everything around me shouts out that I should be afraid. My body feels it.

A part of me wants to believe it, because it is what I know and its a formidable opponent…especially when everything we see in our socialized world seems to thrive on fear, stimulating it through repeated application.

When I first created my Internet presence, I felt so much fear. I couldn’t quite find the words to say what I wanted to say. Yet, I persevered.

Something in me needed, and continues to need, to find the language that will free me to express the beauty I see, the injustices that break my heart open, the truth I know in my bones.

Something pushes me to write about topics that aren’t comfortable or easy, that invite controversy, that challenge how I see myself and others.

I crave the language that will help me express the inexpressible, that will help you to know what it is that matters to me.

I long to see the connections between things I know and things I do not yet see, and I know that in writing, when I really let go into the fertile unknown, places can be illuminated if I am willing to write truth.

I hunger to know you, to know that place in you that is the same in me.

I yearn to connect women with the deep feminine within, for I know that when women finally make peace with their own womanhood, reconnect with our power that is present already, and come together in service of all of life we will know the sacred that is present in all things earthly and earthy.

Beautiful Epidemic

I notice how many women are writing, now. It seems to be an epidemic, a wild and contagiously beautiful epidemic.

For many of us, after a lifetime of being afraid to speak, words are now tumbling out onto the page and into the invisible connections that the Internet affords.

I see this wildly beautiful epidemic, and the sacred connections of the internet and social media, as a divine plan to bring our voices together into a beautiful chorus of remembering.

Sometimes, the tyrannies shout so loudly I can’t find the words I don’t yet know. All around my heart, I feel the walls that were erected, walls upon which those tyrannies were written. Sometimes, I long for enough room, enough space, enough solitude, enough of my own internal landscape so that I can alight on those words I do not yet know and tear down those walls I built so long ago.

Privilege

One of the ugliest tyrannies I have swallowed in my experience in this culture as a white, educated, woman of the middle-class is institutionalized privilege.

I’ve wondered what privilege actually is, and so have you.

In the comments to part one, Judith wrote,

“From my perspective, privilege is the freedom from having to think about your impact on another. Before I lost my hearing, I never really considered how important acoustic accessibility is to those who are hard of hearing. I didn’t have to think about it because it didn’t affect me. Now, however, it’s in the forefront of my consciousness all of the time. When I can extend my empathy and compassion to others who experience the world differently than I do, when I imagine how it might be for them and take action to rectify the inequity that I am causing people, the world will start to look a lot different to me and to those people known and unknown to me with whom I’m in constant relationship.”

Jeanie wrote,

This morning, I’m stunned by how “silence earns me privilege and costs me power….” and I’m thinking about how I need to take a good, long and bold look at that. What is privilege, anyway? Is it privilege or protection? And is privilege or protection based on distortions and out-right wrongs and maybe even evil really authentic privilege or protection, or just cover-ups and body bags, zipped around the parts of ourselves that are afraid to live loud and naked and real?

The cost of my silence is exacted from my autonomy and personal authority — and the price I pay for it is extracted from my body. Is it worth it to speak up? And how and where and with whom do I speak up so that my words and my effort matter and are not just lost in the quicksand pits of “the way it’s always been”?

I know privilege is defined as:

A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste. Such an advantage, immunity, or right exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others.

It’s hard for me to look at. Yes, I was born into it. It wasn’t my fault. And, at least for me, I know that once I become aware of it, to continue to enjoy it at someone else’s expense will kill my heart.

It feels to me that privilege can only be found at the expense of someone else. That’s the dirty little secret I never quite saw before, as naive as that sounds. There is always some way to justify our own specialness. I know I have.

Privilege pits one against another. It holds one above and the other below. It makes one more valuable, the other less.

I have experienced painful, painful things as a woman. You can call it oppression or not. I do. I have experienced this oppression, and I have enjoyed a place of specialness, too. In this culture, my place as a white woman is literally crazy-making. That’s the best way I can explain it. I am at a loss for words when I try to describe the way it feels to know I am an oppressed citizen because of my gender and a privileged citizen because of my race.

Through a great amount of inner work, I’ve reached the place where I no longer want to hang on to my grievances with those people in my life who caused me pain in the past.

I can see I still have grievances against the system, against a system that continues to cause so much suffering. Yet, this system isn’t a thing. It is held up by each one of us who lives and breaths its structure into the choices we make.

It’s taken me some time to figure out when I fight the system, I only strengthen it.

What if, instead, I come together with you, meeting somewhere where we hold each other as women who no longer desire to give life to that which keeps us separate, whether it be comparison of pain, guilt for participating in a system that privileges one over another, or any other way we’ve been socialized to keep the hierarchy in place?

What if we walk in love, together, doing what we do with great love, not only for each other, but for life itself?

What would it take to trust in your own womanhood, so deeply, that you see that womanhood in another and know her as yourself?

Liberation

Freedom doesn’t come when I think I have to help you because I am privileged.

Freedom doesn’t come when I shrink away because I feel guilty about my privilege.

Freedom will come when we see that none of us are free until we are all free and, as a wise Aborigine woman said,

“If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.”

Commenting on part three, Rupa wrote:

“I understand, to the degree I can, the pain you’ve felt in birthing this series, Julie. Privilege, class and race as they relate to womanhood is such a charged subject, and I respect you for your courage to explore it with a wide open heart. Thank you.

My hope is that the conversation you’ve begun will bring us closer in our shared experience of being women, not so much in our pain as in our power.”

Our Power As Women

Our power will come when we come out from under the shadow of this system into the light of our true selves, connected by our ‘shared experience of being women, not so much in our pain as in our power’.

I do know it means we must come to know ourselves new, to know ourselves as autonomous souls, not in relation to any other. While that may seem difficult at first glance, we can begin with telling the truth, somewhere in our lives. Yes, it can feel risky, yet:

“What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ~ Audre Lorde:

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This post is the fifth in a series of posts on Silence, Privilege and Oppression. You’ll find part one, part two, part three and part four to be important preludes to this post, as well as this interlude a beautiful expression of how powerful it is to voice what is dying to be said.

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Hot From Our Sacred Lips

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As we are right in the middle of a who-knows-how-many-part series on Silence, Privilege and Oppression, I thought I would post an interlude, if you will. I think it has so much to do with the entire series. See what you feel.

I found this video, today, and heaven, did the tears come down. Tears of joy, tears of grief, tears for the sheer beauty of this woman’s words and her ability to say them with such ferocity and love.

Her name is Mayda del Valle.

This was taped at the White House Poetry Jam in 2009.

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“Grandmother, how did you pray? Did you store your memories of the creator in strands of hair tucked into scented soap boxes or placentas buried under avocado trees?

“Grandmother, what secrets do your bones hold?”

“Abuela, how did you pray before someone told you who your god should be?”

This is one of the most amazing spoken word poetry experiences I have ever encountered. I’ve watched it at least five times now, and each time I grow ever more amazed.

I feel so much grief over what has been done to the earth, to animals, to children, to women, and to men, in the name of domination and control.

I feel so much grief for what we’ve lost, and yet, so much hope for what is being born, right now.

May we come together, as one people, One Source, in service to Life itself.

May we speak up and out with the pure and beautiful truth, fully aflame, dancing hot from our sacred lips.

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So Many Silences – part three

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“I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.” ~ Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)

You may have noticed that I’ve begun each post of this series with a quote from Audre Lorde. The depth of her insights astounds me. In her life, she was an African-American, lesbian woman. I share that because I am aware that I have no idea, no sense at all, of the major amount of oppression she must have faced in her life.

Her words cut my heart open. Wide.

My anger, my rage has been hidden most of my life. Hidden way down. She knew her anger like the beat of her heart and the taste of her spit.

When I read these lines, my heart stopped at ‘the threatening universe of whiteness’.

It would be really easy for me to write something here about Lorde’s quote and how it affected me. I could leave it at that, but I can’t.

Let me take a moment to share something else.

In the comments

of part one of this series, a woman named Kierra D. Foster-Ba shared this:

Both a scratch and a gaping wound share some commonalities. This does not mean they are the same or that the only difference is the degree or severity. This is how I feel when people of privilege talk about oppression. Yes, everyone experiences being treated unfairly but this does not mean that they are oppressed. There are various statistics that reveal that white women have overwhelmingly (at least statistically) benefited from affirmative action, something that people of color have been demonized for. So while, I would not challenge your feelings, your feelings are yours. I think in 2011 oppression is a strong word for a middle class, educated white woman to use. To me oppression is when 97% of the images of people you share several identity groups with (race; gender; complexion; body size; shape) are buffoons; belligerent; and unbelievable ignorant. A recent commercial for bounce comes to mind. It is a series about different people and the way they use bounce. The large black woman announces “Ah put em…Ah put em in my shoes; Ah put in my drawers….Ah put em; Ah bin put em for years.” This is oppression. These images of the angry; unattractive; ignorant and large black woman have not changed from the antebellum period to now, but the images of priveledged white women have changed from fainting women too fragile to work to smart; competative; atheletic women who are equal to men.

When I first read Kierra’s comment, I was taken aback. In my experience, the oppression I have suffered has been very painful. And, I don’t think it helps to judge who’s pain is more.

Yet,

Kierra’s comment has stayed with me. I’ve promised myself to really be ruthless with my own bullshit. Her words pull at me, telling me to stop, listen, feel.

Just before I posted part two of this series, my article, The Courage to Sin, was unexpectedly posted on the Huffington Post. I didn’t expect this, because I submitted the post a while ago, and the post is long. The team at HP told me it was too long. They asked me to cut it down and I chose not to. Suddenly, as I found myself knee-deep in this series, it appeared, and I received this comment:

Well,

I guess it depends on who’s doing the ‘sinning’, since all women aren’t held to the same standard.
For example, myself being black,for me and a white woman to commit the same ‘sin’ isn’t the same. I will always be looked at and judged more harshly, and the worst motives will always be attributed to my actions. It’s not fun, free or innocent when I do it, it’s seen as evidence of an inherent lowliness.

Her words, “inherent lowliness” caused my heart to hurt, again. Those words are a direct hit to the hierarchical bigotry of patriarchy.

I responded saying none of this is fun, free or innocent for me, either…AND, “I hear the pain in your words. I want to know your story.”

I know of my own experience, of friend’s and client’s experiences with oppression. There are experiences of personal oppression, group oppression, systemic oppression and god knows what other kinds. Yes, there are degrees of oppression. And, there are very loud and obvious forms, and there are some very silent, very hidden forms.

I do know, after 54 years of living on this planet, that I will never really know your experience, or Kierra’s, or this other woman who courageously shared herself. I can only know mine. And, I do know that I want to hear their stories, hear your story, while at the same time have you hear mine.

Somewhere it could be easy to slip into silence again, a silence that comes from believing my story shouldn’t be told aloud because I was born white. No one has said that. I just know me, the old me. A while ago, I did believe that. I didn’t speak of it. As I read these words of women of color and their experiences, I know all our stories hold something another woman needs to hear.

The privilege I have enjoyed,

has given me things other women have not had. Some who have read this series have wondered if I’m attempting to speak of privilege as something to feel guilt about. I’m not. What I am wanting to share, here, is my process of investigating into the story I tell myself about silence, privilege and oppression in my life.

I truly want to know where I am not telling myself the truth, where I keep myself separate, where my own consciousness is stuck, holding on to something that I think is serving, but that really is not.

Guilt isn’t going to help anyone. Ruthless truth-telling will. Compassion for myself and my fellow sisters will. A genuine hunger to know what will break the barriers of separation with my sisters, so we can join hands to voice our collective “Enough is enough!” will.

Going back to Audre Lorde’s quote, I was shaken by the realization that an extremely intelligent, insightful, beautiful woman saw whiteness as a “threatening universe”. I am of this universe. I am a part of this threatening universe. I am of this whiteness.

When I read this, “It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.” my eyes light on the words, “worth wanting each other”. I don’t know the exact context that led to Lorde’s words, yet I am deeply touched by the depth of her heart. I do know that when I read them, I realized all women, no matter what complexion, race, socio-economic background, religion, nationality, age, sexual orientation, are worth wanting.

I know I am worth you wanting me, and I know you are worth my wanting you.

I now so clearly see that one of the most important ways I give up my power when I continue the deceit of privilege, is the power of connected women. When I speak of power, here, it’s not power over, but power with, and I know I am most powerful when my voice is joined in Sisterhood.

The old way is of hierarchy, the new way is not yet known.

And, the way of the Feminine is connectedness, relationship, weaving and circles. I can’t stand together with other women when I hold onto privilege out of fear of what might come if I lose it.

These past days of living this series of posts have brought many moments of synchronicity. I know, when we are doing what we’re here to do, symbols and offerings show up directly in one’s lived experience. I discovered this poem on Louise Rooney’s blog. The poem speaks to what is happening right now in our world. It speaks to the power that privilege and silence robs us of, the power of women united, voices rising and heard.

This World (by Rose Flint)

In Sudan, a Muslim woman journalist

faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in a restaurant.

In Afghanistan, the family of Nadia the Poet

who wrote of love and beauty, said she shamed them –

she may have died with her scholar husband’s hands

around her throat. Sometimes lipstick is a crime

And Shakespeare, maths, and the desire to dance.

And still a woman’s unbound hair incites a man

to sexual violence – she must be covered up

in darkness, top to toe, to keep her safe.

So. In America, loving mothers give their daughters

breast implants for graduation. Thirty-two thousand

women seek breast surgery every month.

And in Africa, mothers, grandmothers, take the little girls

to the rusty knives of genital mutilation.

All this is fear and desperation,

the last acts of Old Order who is dying on his feet

and punching blind. This is when it changes.

The Goddess wakes. Everywhere, there are women

finding courage, taking action, speaking out, risking

their own lives for other women, refusing to collude.

This is Feminism now: becoming Sisterhood –

politician, priestess and protester working together,

sharing what it means to be Woman, everywhere.

Our linked hands and strong hearts are a power;

the Goddess is returning through each one of us

and we are bringing deep changes. We are dreaming in

a future that gives hope to the World, we are

women’s voices rising: strident, beautiful – and heard.

(c) Rose Flint 2009, published in We’Moon Diary 2011

This post is written in honor of International Women’s Day, 2011. I would love to know your reactions, experiences, insights or anything else you feel you would like to share.

I want to know your story.

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This post is part of Heather Plett’s 100 Years :: 100 People :: 100 Changes project. Today, she is offering a free ebook, Sophia Rising, with contributions of 20 people from all over the world. I am honored to be a contributor to Heather’s book.

::

This post is the third in a series of posts on Silence, Privilege and Oppression. You’ll find part one and part two an important prelude to this post.

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The Seed in Upheaval

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Amidst the death, upheaval and chaos of destruction in Egypt, Tunisia and other places around the world, something new, something not yet seen or known, is coming into being.

Like a seedling pushing up through the ground, this new way is strong and resilient, not because of its size, for a seedling is tiny, but because of its strength, tenacity and resilience. These come from the very source of life that is midwifing a new way. The ever present energy of life is pushing forth and through.

Life encompasses the totality that we see held in the opposites, and everything in between along the continuum they create: the masculine and the feminine, death and birth, light and dark, hardness and softness, destruction and creation.

This morning, I came across this post by Filiz Telek, a woman who is passionate about “awakening the presence of sacred and possibility in human heart and spirit”. I love what she writes about and how she writes it. In her post, she shares this video, and the words she shares with it are quite beautiful. She holds this video with such tenderness and honor, in the same way she holds life and the sacred feminine. In Filizat’s words:

Listen to her, she’s saying “I am the meaning in the middle of chaos“
As the old system falls apart and chaos unfolds – and it is very likely that it will touch us and our loved ones too – we will need these heart songs, we will need to ground ourselves in her calling for wisdom and courage. I remember Neda, the young Iranian woman who was shot dead in front of our eyes as she was demanding freedom during Green Revolution in Iran. She was silenced, but now Amel is singing for her too and for all of us:
I am free and my word is free.
May our heart songs bring the freedom and unity consciousness that for so long, we have been waiting and longing for.

I, too, feel compelled to share the video here, because it is such an indication of what I wrote about yesterday, that being human is a vulnerable proposition. And,

This video spoke to me so poignantly of what is happening all over the world, and what is happening in my own being: something strong, and fierce and beautiful is pushing up through, trying to be born. It has to push up through so much of what has been in place for decades, so much of what has been created to keep things the same. Yet, the force is powerful and I know it is relentless, and that it will not be denied.

Upheaval is here, both within and without. I also share it too, because the woman singing, Amel Mathlouthi, is a symbol of the courageous soft power of the Feminine, standing in the middle of chaos, singing of new life.

Watch and listen and feel what is stirring within you, what new life is pushing through you to come to the surface and grow. It is so evident, that we are one. Like our brothers and sisters in these places, we, too, feel something stirring, something coming, something new. May it come with peace, may we begin to trust Life, that Life itself is change.

Thank you, Filizat, for sharing this with us.

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Alive & Awake: part one

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Woman with a Crescent Moon (or) The Eclipse, by Paul Albert Besnard - 1888
Woman with a Crescent Moon (or) The Eclipse, by Paul Albert Besnard - 1888

She eclipses the moon. And in response, it’s as if the moon highlights the darkness of the feminine mystery that surrounds her.

The Moon. The Dream World. Mystery.

Last night, I slept within a vivid dream world. The overarching theme of the dreams was the simplicity of life when we live from the truth.

Simple, yes. Painless, no.

I dreamed of the body and it’s relationship to truth. In my dream, I became completely embodied. All the way home. Conscious throughout. The further down I went into the body, the clearer the truth was.

In my dream, when I arrived at the very bottom, so to speak, of my body, meaning I was conscious all the way down from the hairs on my head to the ends of my toes, and in every cell in-between, the truth was sparklingly clear and radiant.

If I attempted to do something that did not come from this truth that my body knows, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t act. My body stood steadfast, while my mind argued like a sullen child.

Then, even my chattering mind dropped away. I was only conscious through the body, but in every cell. All there was was truth. All action came from truth. I didn’t fight myself. I didn’t fight others. I just lived from the wisdom of the body.

In this place, full embodiment meant full truth. There was no choice but to live truth, to act from truth, to love from truth.

I could feel the peace that moved throughout the body as I moved in the world.

Coming down into the sacred flesh and bones that was home for me, I could no longer pretend I’m not powerful beyond any kind of human measure; I could no longer stay quiet in the face of the violence that others face every day; I could no longer choose false safety and security over right action. Choice and action were a fluid dance that flowed straight out of conscious awareness.

In the light of morning, I sat up in bed with a new understanding of the power of embodiment.

Next…

In part two of this three part series, I will move deeper into the body and the power it offers to us if we’re willing to come home to it. The body knows. The body remembers. The body could tell stories, all the stories of my life from before I was born up to this very moment.

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Author(ity)

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Reverb10 Day 17

Prompt: Lesson Learned What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

Authority.

I realized how much I am not conscious of my own authority. I realize how well trained I have been to give it away. I realize how rarely it seems possible to challenge authority, to speak out, and act out, against something that goes so against everything I stand for, everything that feels true in my being.

It’s one of those lessons that keeps coming back in ever widening circles, like a spiral dive into ever opening consciousness. Sometimes, make that pretty often, I have to keep being reminded, over and over, of my unconscious beliefs.

The etymology of the word ‘authority’

It’s funny how the meaning of words changes over time, reflecting how beliefs and societies change.

authority Look up authority at Dictionary.com
early 13c., autorite “book or quotation that settles an argument,” from O.Fr. auctorité (12c.; Mod.Fr. autorité), from L. auctoritatem (nom. auctoritas) “invention, advice, opinion, influence, command,” from auctor “master, leader, author” (see author). Usually spelled with a -c- in English till 16c., when it was dropped, in imitation of the French. Meaning “power to enforce obedience” is from late 14c.; meaning “people in authority” is from 1610s. Authorities “those in charge, those with police powers” is recorded from mid-19c.

Notice how, in the early part of the 13th century, the word pointed to a book or quotation that served as something to solve a dispute.

And, notice how the words changes over the centuries, to “power to enforce obedience” in the late 14th century, to “people in authority” in the 1610s to “those in charge, those with police powers, a recorded definition from the mid 19th century.

What a big leap from author to those with the power to enforce obedience.

The word authority has always had such a strong correlation with power, domination and aggression in my consciousness. No wonder.

From another source, the origin is shown as:

[Middle English auctorite, from Old French autorite, from Latin auctrits, auctritt-, from auctor, creator; see author.]

Creator. Author. (sounds vaguely familiar with #11 of my 11 things for 2011).

author Look up author at Dictionary.com
c.1300, autor “father,” from O.Fr. auctor, from L. auctorem (nom. auctor) “enlarger, founder, master, leader,” lit. “one who causes to grow,” agent noun from auctus, pp. of augere “to increase” (see augment). Meaning “one who sets forth written statements” is from late 14c.

Father.

How this beautiful masculine energy of father has been perverted to mean domination and power over.

One of the biggest things that has kept me from owning my own authority, in my life, my work and my writing, is the ingrained belief that someone else out there has more authority than me, authority over me; someone else, out there, is the expert; someone else, out there, will take care of things.

It’s such a place of powerlessness and victimhood. It’s a place of lethargy and resignation. It’s a place of adolescent comfort.

Authority as Author

How different things look when I see authority from the place of author.

Author of my own life. Author of works that share with the world the beauty and wisdom that move through me. Author of creative expression that includes the powerful parts of me I’ve been well trained to hide and keep down in a society where it is ‘taught’ that women don’t have power or authority.

The masculine energies in me have scared me. I’ve seen what power looks like out there. I’ve seen authority dominate others who are seen as, and believe they are, less powerful. This authority keeps in place an infrastructure that holds this perverted sense of authority in place.

And, I don’t know what will happen if I stand up to that authority out there that seems to have so much power.

The Fierce Face of the Feminine.

In an incredibly powerful TEDx talk, Chameli Ardagh eloquently speaks of the ‘Fierce Face of the Feminine’.

She shares numerous stories about her own childhood and training to suppress emotion, but also an instructive story of Kali and Shiva. It is in this story that I discovered a simple, yet powerful, understanding of how to express this fierceness with presence.

Shiva is the masculine counterpart to Kali. Shiva is presence. As I discovered the father/masculine aspect of author and authority, I could see the masculine presence necessary to hold the expression of fierce anger and rage.

A disowned masculine makes it very difficult to stand in one’s authority. Knowing a positive masculine, a loving presence, is within me is a more healthy internal infrastructure from which to express the author within, the author that writes about both love and rage, an author that doesn’t leave out important parts of the ‘story’.

This video is long for our short attention spans, but every moment of it is well worth your time.

Something shifts dramatically when I:

  • remember that the word authority (and all words) carries much more than simply a definition. It carries experiences, images, beliefs, a young girl’s impressions of the world and what happens when one pushes against authority.
  • hear a powerful story about the nature of the masculine and feminine and how they can be together to help balance expression, both internally and externally, and individually and collectively.
  • realize (in an ever-deepening way) the power of unconscious thoughts and beliefs and how they keep a lid on my expression as a female human being.
  • understand the power of words and the power of the story we tell ourselves about what is acceptable and what is not, about what is loving and what is not, about what is possible and what is not.
  • reclaim the power of a fully integrated and balanced awareness, that includes the full range of human feelings and expression.
  • accept that there are many powers, all about us, conspiring to be of service to the present awakening to love, to power that loves rather than dominates.

We all have authority, the ability to author our own lives. And, the infrastructure currently at work, both externally, and internally in our own minds, was not created to support this. It is shifting. We are shifting. We are waking up to the power within.

I now can so clearly see that nothing is stopping me from writing what I need to write, as a woman here to write her life, as creatrix standing in her own stead.

And, you?

How do you see your own authority? Where do you give it expression? Where do you not? How might your life be different if you became the author of your own life?

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Magic Hips

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I am in awe of this poem.

When I found this video of Lucille Clifton reading her poem, Homage to my Hips, I must have watched it five times in a row, drinking in the sheer audacity of her words. Yes, audacity. She makes no apologies for taking up space with her big hips.

What a glorious thing – a woman’s body that moves and dances and sings of its own wild lusciousness.

She makes no apologies for being big, strong, and tremendously tantalizing.

Her hips go where they want to go and do what they want to do.

Oh to take up space with these hips, my hips, to know they belong here, to let them loose to sing hallelujah as they move and sashay with each and every step I take.

I could learn a thing or two from Lucille Clifton.

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The Nature of Power

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In the 21st Century, power will not change the nature of women, women will change the nature of power. ~ Bella Abzug


Power is only a Word

Power is only a word, but it’s a word with a sordid past…and a very sordid present. It has a lot of baggage.

Power, as we know it today, dominates. Silences. Abuses.

Power is abused, too. At some point, power became power-over.

Somewhere, at some time, in the ‘rules’ of the human world, a rule was written about power, men and women. A rule was made that says, men have power over women. Somehow we, men and women, seem to believe in this story.

The recent, deeply disturbing, widely broadcast story of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani’s imminent death by stoning, once again, brought the tyrannical abuses of power-over into the bright light of our awareness.

A few days after the international outcry about both her death sentence and the method the Iranian government threatened to use, the archaic practice of stoning, I still couldn’t shake the visceral anger, sadness and powerlessness I felt. This was such blatant, abuse of power; power so egregious, that I shudder to contemplate just how often and how much this kind of sadistic power is used against those who are completely vulnerable to it.

In the swirl of these emotions, I felt a very real sensation of complete vulnerability as a woman. Here was this beautiful woman, waiting in an Iranian prison for a death sentence to be carried out in a most barbaric and painful way. And, here I was, sitting safely in my home, but acutely feeling an intense vulnerability, as if there was no separation between us.

Then it hit me, there is no separation between us. In a very real collective sense, what is done to any part of life, is done to us all. If we are aware of the deeper feelings that move through the human soul, we know this.

On this same level, we all feel the pain of abusive power, oppression and misogyny whether we are the abuser or victim.

As I sat with these feelings, I suddenly felt a tenderness open up that was deep. It was painful, vulnerable and raw. It filled every part of every thing.

I wrote about this tenderness, about a revolution of tenderness in the first post of this three-part series on Tenderness, Power and Grace.


Soft Power

I know many women who push their power away because the only power they’ve known has been used against them. I’m one of those women.

And yet, my power keeps pulling me to it. This is a different kind of power than power-over. It comes from deep in the bowels of my femaleness. It feels rooted to the earth. It feeds my soul. It nurtures my creativity. It is the source of my deep and abiding love for all of life.

There is an unwritten, unspoken, yet very palpable threat of violence against women if we do step fully into the power we know is contained within our beings.

I feel this threat of violence. Yet, this power must come to life, regardless. This is soft power, a tremendous tenderness toward all of life. It is a great compassionate love. It compels me to drop even more deeply into this place of fierce tenderness.

Of course we’re coming to the brink of extinction of so many forms of life, including our own – our way for so long has been to dominate, control and destroy the life principle, namely that of woman. She is the embodiment of the life principle.

What would life be like if power-over, once again, became simply power, the power to be able – to express, to create, to be, to act? I don’t know, but I do know it will have something to do with love. It will come from not rejecting anything, because what we reject and condemn in another, is the same as rejecting ourselves, and no peace can ever come from that.


The Power of Woman

This is the power of woman: to love everything, without exception. As the embodiment of the life principle, she holds it all, without division. This power can only come when she no longer believes she must be everything to everyone. It can only come when she comes home to herself, with love for all the beauty she is. When she sees the value of herself, she can know the fullest power that is available to her as woman.

How does woman do that when she faces the immensity of oppression, degradation and misogyny?

By turning to look at another woman, to look deeply in another woman’s heart, to see within her what she can’t see in herself. By turning to the earth, to look deeply in the earth’s heart.

By opening our hearts to earth, to feel the incredible suffering this beautiful, living, pulsing beauty is enduring, and at the same time seeing her strength, her capacity to heal, her desire to continue to provide a home for all of life.

Woman is tied to the earth more deeply than man. When we open to her power to heal and regenerate, we can know our own capacity to heal and regenerate.

Anne Baring speaks of women:

There is a danger that in seeking power and equality with men in order for her voice and her creative gifts to be recognised, woman may unconsciously reject the very foundation which gives, through her millennial experience as custodian of life, something of supreme importance to say.

Can we…

There is no question that women are changing the nature of power. We see it occurring everywhere. As we do…

Can we encourage each other to come forth into our power?

Can we hold each other in supreme love and compassion as we travel this sacred path together?

Can we stand firm in the knowledge that we are worthy of the sacred nature we know is at the core of our womanhood?

Can we love those parts of ourselves that feel so difficult to love?

Can we know, in our experience, that we are all mothers to all the world’s children?

Can we love others with the fierce tenderness that might melt the deepest darkest hate into the most brilliant light of love?


And, you?

I’d love to know your feelings and thoughts about power and women; about what is emerging through us; about your story with power.


This is the second post in a series of three on tenderness, power and grace. All three posts are part of the Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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A Revolution of Tenderness

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It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender. ~ Jenny Holzer

The power of tenderness.

The tender skin of one touching the tender skin of another, causing an exquisite encounter, not possible in any other way.

The tender eyes that want nothing from the world, except to welcome and embrace all that generously spills into view.

The tender heart that loves simply for love’s sake, rather than for what one might get out of loving.

Some tender places of the heart can only be known in relationship, when one is willing to lay down arms, open the heart and wait, exposed.

I know the power of tenderness.

We all know the power of tenderness.

Revolution begins with changes in the individual. ~ Jenny Holzer

We already know, well, revolutions of domination, where ‘power over’ has all but brought the human race to death’s door.

We know the power of tenderness in intimate moments.

What if we were to realize that it is in our own self-interest to engage in a revolution of tenderness?

What if we were to realize that the power of tenderness is so much greater than the power of tyranny?

I, too, wonder how this might happen, how we shift from tyranny to tenderness.

Those that engage in domination and destruction stand in a perspective that sees tenderness as weakness, not strength.

But, I also know the only way to begin a revolution within is with a tender ‘yes’, a surrendered ‘yes’.

It begins with trusting that ultimately, the power of tenderness rather than the power of domination will be what saves us.


Which is the more powerful act?

Somewhere within each of us is a place that dominates and condemns – others and ourselves. This place is the most tender of places, because, it fears tenderness, yet longs to be showered with it. This place learned to dominate early. It learned to condemn and judge at an early age. When tenderness was what this place was longing for, instead it received judgment. Somewhere this place believes judgment and condemnation are the best way to be strong in an unsafe world; yet, if you check-in closely, what’s really going on is a longing to be touched with tender hands, to be seen, really seen, with tender eyes, and to be held and embraced by the most tender places of the heart. Hence, it is in your own self-interest to be tender.

We may fear being tender and loving will be seen as weak by those that continue to shower our beautiful world with hate, violence, oppression and greed. And as long as we see it as being weak, they will. When we know the strength of tenderness as a gift to ourselves, and when we see the powerful effects of the offering of tenderness to another, the perspective that ‘tenderness is weakness’ can begin to shift.

Try it. Feel the effects it has on you and others. Compare these to the moments when you judge and condemn others. Then, ask yourself, truly look to see, which is the more powerful act? Which way of being requires true vulnerability and fierce loyalty to love?

We’ve all judged and been judged. We’ve all condemned and been condemned We’ve all dominated and been dominated.We all know these experiences. What if we were to caress another’s ragged coat of life with the tender touch of one who knows these things intimately? This is the real revolution of tenderness that is poised to unfold.

::

This is the first post in a series of three on tenderness, power and grace. All three posts are part of the Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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saying Yes

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My last post, the sweetest Yes, was the first post of a two-part series. I’m inserting this one into the middle of the two for reasons you’ll come to see. It’s like a two pieces of bread becoming a sandwich, where the filling in the middle is this amazing spicy concoction of passion, power and sacred activism. Here’s why:

One of the comments I received about the sweetest Yes was from Zan at Breaking Sod. Zan wrote, “Have you heard this amazing woman? Your post reminds me strongly of her:

I was so moved deeply by this spoken word piece of masterful art by Andrea Gibson. I’d love to know how she moves you.

Thank you, Zan.

…

Say Yes ~ by Andrea Gibson

when two violins are placed in a room
if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound the note
if this is your definition of hope
this is for you
the ones who know how powerful we are
who know we can sound the music in the people around us
simply by playing our own strings
for the ones who sing life into broken wings
open their chests and offer their breath
as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving
spare those intent on proving god is dead
for you when your fingers are red
from clutching your heart
so it will beat faster
for the time you mastered the art of giving yourself for the sake of someone else
for the ones who have felt what it is to crush the lies
and lift truth so high the steeples bow to the sky
this is for you
this is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom
who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world
has slapped them in the face with its lack of light
for the mothers who feed their children first
and thirst for nothing when they’re full

this is for women
and for the men who taught me only women bleed with the moon
but there are men who cry when women bleed
men who bleed from women’s wounds
and this is for that moon
on the nights she seems hung by a noose
for the people who cut her loose
and for the people still waiting for the rope to burn
about to learn they have scissors in their hands

this is for the man who showed me
the hardest thing about having nothing
is having nothing to give
who said the only reason to live is to give ourselves away
so this is for the day we’ll quit or jobs and work for something real
we’ll feel for sunshine in the shadows
look for sunrays in the shade
this is for the people who rattle the cage that slave wage built
and for the ones who didn’t know the filth until tonight
but right now are beginning songs that sound something like
people turning their porch lights on and calling the homeless back home

this is for all the shit we own
and for the day we’ll learn how much we have
when we learn to give that shit away
this is for doubt becoming faith
for falling from grace and climbing back up
for trading our silver platters for something that matters
like the gold that shines from our hands when we hold each other

this is for the grandmother who walked a thousand miles on broken glass
to find that single patch of grass to plant a family tree
where the fruit would grow to laugh
for the ones who know the math of war
has always been subtraction
so they live like an action of addition
for you when you give like every star is wishing on you
and for the people still wishing on stars
this is for you too

this is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to
for the time you taught a 14 year old girl she was powerful
this is for the time you taught a 14 year old boy he was beautiful
for the radical anarchist asking a republican to dance
cause what’s the chance of everyone moving from right to left
if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS
this is for the no becoming yes
for scars becoming breath
for saying i love you to people who will never say it to us
for scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine
for the dime you gave away when you didn’t have a penny
for the many beautiful things we do
for every song we’ve ever sung
for refusing to believe in miracles
because miracles are the impossible coming true
and everything is possible

this is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us
cause tonight saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that whatever song we’ve been singing we sing even more
the world needs us right now more than it ever has before
pull all your strings
play every chord
if you’re writing letters to the prisoners
start tearing down the bars
if you’re handing out flashlights in the dark
start handing out stars
never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart
play loud
play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken
and you’re their last chance for sun
play like there’s no time for hoping brighter days will come
play like the apocalypse is only 4…3…2
but you have a drum in your chest that could save us
you have a song like a breath that could raise us
like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue
play like you know we won’t survive if you don’t
but we will if you do
play like saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that we give every single breath
this is for saying-yes

this is for saying-yes

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