Category Archives: spirituality

A Man’s View

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Continuing along the thoughts on Friday’s blog~~~

I don’t mind telling you that this blog brought tears to my eyes. Really stunning to read such honesty and depth.  And he’s not gay! (meaning that, as Patrick states, most gay guys “get” women and their perspective, but straight guys, especially straight white guys don’t.)

From the interview:

Growing up in my house, feminism was actually a positive word. My mother, who is a strong woman, has always identified as a feminist. Despite this fact, she found herself being mistreated by my father. This just goes to show that even strong women — even feminist-identified women — can find themselves involved with men who treat them badly.

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This was so powerful…because in the finger-pointing department, when blame is being handed out, it’s always the woman’s fault if she is mistreated.

This, too, was powerful:

Seeing the way she was treated, and experiencing mistreatment myself, showed me that boys who grow up in violent households do not have to follow the path of the abuser. Instead, we can follow another path — the path of empathy for our mother, and that we can become allies in the struggle for women’s equality, rather than just another violent enforcer of male supremacy.

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This is the thing that is so hard to understand:  why do some men recognize what was done to them and their mothers, but then go on to abuse others?  Why do some choose that path and others fight against it?

And this reinforces my thoughts on a previous blog on how some folks are abused but do not go on to continue the abuse.  I’m thinking there are more out there than is being acknowledged, because they aren’t the ones being arrested for committing acts of cruelty…they are the ones quietly living their lives without repeating the abuse…

…but that also doesn’t mean that all of those committing acts of cruelty are being dealt with by society…such as men who beat their mates, but the mates refuse to press charges (or never call police to report it.)

Further down the post, Patrick goes into what defines feminism–and how women themselves cannot agree on the definition. I know that I don’t.  As I’ve posted before, I believe in equality, but I don’t think abortions should be performed after six weeks’ gestation.  But feminists don’t see it that way–they feel a woman should be able to have an abortion any time she wants it–right up until birth.  I can’t in good conscience agree with that thinking.  In the feminist world, that automatically excludes me from being called a feminist.  This point of view wasn’t easy to come by, either, as I have seen the photo of the woman dead on a hotel room floor with a hangar protruding from her vagina.  I don’t want to see women in such desperate circumstances that they resort to that–it is much better to have safe, reliable contraceptives available to her. (Yes, men should be responsible for contraception, too, but since she is the one who will be most impacted by a pregnancy, and he could be unreliable, she needs to take responsibility for her own sake.)

Feminists in the 70s were so anti-homemaking that women who chose this route were treated as if they were mindless dummies.

It’s an odd circumstance that things that defined us as women–the home, childbirth and raising children, became so hated.  It’s as if they wanted us to become equal by embracing the stereotyped attributes of men.

In other words, we could only be thought of as valuable and therefore equal….if we became men…

…and the unintended consequences of that is the world tilted even more towards the masculine and diminished the feminine.

What we need to right the world is to once again embrace the feminine as valuable–to recognize that one can be soft as well as strong and that those two attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  That we can prop each other up when one is feeling weak, instead of attacking.  That it’s okay for women to have an opinion different than a man’s and it’s just as valid and valuable. That taking care of the Earth is the feminine that needs to be honored.

There’s more to write, but perhaps for another day.  I’m out of time.

Cornel West

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(Oh, how I miss CSPAN…even though it is slowly becoming mostly conservative views.)

Speaks his mind on President Obama using MLK’s bible to be sworn in.  He has strong words about “using King’s fire”  and not following up with actions, such as putting Wall St bankers in jail, putting Bush torturers in jail, getting rid of the drones, doing something about poverty...etc.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beyond Vietnam

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Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration.  This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).

He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war.  This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior.  Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war.  According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.

He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.

And he did it anyway….

 

And my new favorite Twain quote is…

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“If Christ were here,  there is one thing he would not be…A Christian.”  Brilliantly said.  Trying to act like Christ is a little too much work…as it requires following “Do Unto Others…”

Diane Sweet has a post up on the fundamentalist Pat Robertson, doing what fundamentalists do:  putting women beneath them…

I disagree with one of the commenters who said that this kind of thinking was dying out.  It’s a dangerous assumption, and from what I’m seeing, far from being a thing of the past.  This crap has been going on for thousands of years, in different forms and won’t “die out” until women are seen and treated as equals. Women are a still not thought of as having equal value in whatever they do–if they stay home to raise the children and care for the house, or if they work outside the home.

The issues with rape and the degradation of the young woman in Steubenville are classic examples of treating women as “less than” and making moral judgments against her that are not made against the men.  She’s a slut to be peed on.  He’s just having a good time.

 

 

Peace, too…

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It came to me that my post Friday had one glaring omission: the Native American spirituality.

A Native American friend of mine gave me this prayer once:

Great One,

Please guide my thinking today.

Please help me to be still and listen to your wisdom.

Help me to love my brothers and sisters and help me to respect all that you’ve made. 

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I think this is the same as “do unto others…”, including nature, as well.

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Onto other Native American issues, Turtletalk has this up on the question of what is the definition of being Native American?  As the story illustrates, someone may belong to a tribe because they are one-quarter Native blood, but their child cannot belong because they are less than that.  The concern is that the tribes are self eliminating themselves by such restrictions.  It’s an interesting and complex topic.

Ghosts of Alcatraz

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Indian Country also has this up on the re-painting of the water tower at Alcatraz.  It’s simply amazing that they allowed this to be done.  I’m glad that this piece of history is being preserved.

If you recall, Alcatraz was formerly a prison that was taken over by the Native Americans on the basis of their former treaties that allowed them to claim any federal land that was not being used.  It was part of the new reclamation of traditional beliefs and reclaiming the Self that had been nearly destroyed by the European population.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller was one that was there, and she wrote about her experience in her autobiography, Mankiller. This is a great book for those unfamiliar with the Native American history and customs.  It was one of the first books I read that opened my mind to how different the Native Americans were as opposed to how they had been portrayed in my history books.

 

Reclaiming native lands

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The Sioux tribe has managed to raise the $9 million necessary to…buy back their own sacred land…(hat tip to common dreams)

This is wonderful!  Absolutely wonderful.  The Black Hills were taken away when the Europeans discovered gold…and the gold rush began…

…now it comes back to those who are connected with it, who cherish it, and will take care of it as it was meant to be.

I second the others–Congratulations!