You are amazing, and you are on the right track. Your moments of joyful magic show it. All is right with who you are and what you are doing this moment. Perfect.
The doors that are opening for you are valuable, because you have something valuable to say. I know you will be a driving force for change!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-solnit/violence-against-women_b_2541940.html
I. on the other hand, read this article. One woman is raped every minute in the US. I read the statistics about the violence to women and children and felt like I was drowning. There is so much violence. There is so much violence we can't even see it, we can't even comprehend it.
I read about the honor killings in the mid-east. Women who have been raped have dishonored their families and so they must die. And I thought, "Yes. There should be honor killings. Any man who is so dishonorable as to attack a woman needs to be dealt with." We need to open our eyes to the violence. But it seems so impossible. The violence, the way we do things just seems so normal. How can we separate ourselves from this horrible culture and see the violence.........
I had an aha! moment today. I am not sure if it fits here, but since I am still thinking about it, I am going to share it here. Many people trace the source of our Aryan culture to the mountains in the north of India. I met a retired language professor years ago, a Basque woman living in the US. Her retirement project was to trace the common language that was the mother of European languages. She traced it to the same starting point.
One of my heroes is Gandhi. But he was part of, lived the caste system. I think that is the perfect example of not recognizing violence because it is so familiar, common, it's sneaky and hiding in plain sight in our culture. The caste system, my guess is it has the same origin, was genius. You are a specific rank, because God says so. You can never move. You can't argue. God has deemed your status. If you are Untouchable, you will always be untouchable. And I realize we have a caste system in the US. From the Puritans we carry the belief that if you have money, God loves you. That is how He shows his favor. If God does not love you, you do not have money. Look at your income and you have an idea of how God ranks you.
I started recognizing this when I saw how we fill our jails and our military with men in order to support an elite group of God-beloved men, and when I read about the glass ceiling for women. And, of course the rape statistics. And the child brides. God doesn't love possessions as much as he love the white men.
My moment today was realizing that I occasionally play the lottery. I am reading a book by Carl Hiaasen, and a character comments that the Indians are getting rich because of the white man's penchant to gamble. I realized that I/we think winning is a sign of divine favor. It sounds stupid, but I realized that way deep in my soul, I was waiting for the Divine to prove that I am worth rewarding. So now I am trying to step away from this whole mindset, and try to imagine how an indigenous person would see abundance and favor and the flow of love. Because the way it seems now - I feel expendable. I recognize the cultural conditioning and wonder what else is polluting my humanity.
So, if one woman is raped every minute in the US, and we add in the violence against women in all other countries, is there ever a single moment when women are not under attack? Is there ever one single moment where we are cherished and safe? Subconsciously recognizing this might explain why I never feel safe.
Love you,
Clare
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