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Through out recorded history males have claimed the right to be first in the use of the human creative power. We do not know what culture on the Earth would be if women had been free to make their own independent creative contributions over time. Surely, it would be better than it is. We know this because to achieve the human culture as we know it some women had to dare to break the thrall of male-testosterone driven prohibitions. Paradoxically, it is a male expectation that much of the knowledge of how to navigate and advance within human culture is passed on from generation to generation by the women, mothers, grandmothers, elementary school teachers, etc. As we verge on over-populating the Earth, the depletion of non-renewable resources, and the pollution of the environment under the management regime of males, we face the possibility that human life may, again, become brutish and short. The MeetingHouse contends that this will be true unless humans adopt a new set of values, new ideals and re-direct their energies toward a sustainable culture with emphasis on love and compassion. Our species has become dependent on creativity. We need more of it. It is too obvious that the greatest untapped source of creativity is the creativity of those women who have been suppressed by men to a subordinate, subservient role in our various human societies. The gloomy future requires us to do everything we can to mobilize women to the task of saving us from the Eco-Spasm that is now in the making. The record is clear we can not count on men to do what is right without the guidance of women. Survival of the species no longer depends on how we use our biological equipment in a competitive race toward better technology. We need to recognize that though biochemistry and physics, and the like, are extremely important that bio-cultural knowledge about political and social systems such as the arts, religion, politics are for the short-to-medium term of our future more important. Soon more and more children will be produced who will not be able to cope due to early childhood malnutrition and the failure to provide them with an adequate education to be productive members of their society. There is a basic law of human ingenuity that humans try very hard to ignore: the greater the power to change the environment, the greater the chances are that undesirable (as well as desirable) results will occur. Large-scale irrigation was discovered about 4000 BCE n Mesopotamia (Iraq). This made the country (Ur/Sumeria - Babylon) fruitful and rich. But, each year the Tigris-Euphrates removed a fraction of topsoil and deposited salty minerals in its place. Overtime this misapplication of technology turned what had been a bountiful garden into a desert where almost nothing grows to this day. The same mal-behavior patterns of humans hold in the area of "memes" which are the information that we must learn and in turn transmit to others. For example, the promises of Nazism, Marxism, Fascism, and the various religious fundamentalisms provide people with a simpleminded set of goals and rules. When humans adopt such sets of beliefs (creeds), at first, it liberates the psyches and a powerful wave of productive energy is loosened as unhappy humans gain new purpose. Soon however, the downside appears. Memes-maladies occur: intolerance, repression, rigidity, and xenophobia. Since the social energies arose because of the promise of superiority of one group over others when it fails to continue to arise, wars, or worse, occur under male management. A small minority want to re-create the environment with the use of diplomacy and education. But, the testosterone-driven men tend to want to use the old tools of war, in part because they excite the blood and advance their careers. It is true that in the past some human societies survived for hundreds even thousands of years more or less unchanged once the initial culture capital had been accumulated. The Egyptians and Chinese were able to do it. But the male-dominated advances in technology over the last two centuries have made the choice of a static society impossible. Global communications methods have improved to the point that knowledge (memes) is now potentially very quickly evenly distributed in terms of availability. The broadcast use of cell phones and the internet are our best examples. It is true that in the past a society that had created complex memes could survive for many centuries. But, now, no society can any longer enjoy the splendid isolation of, say, the Nile empire of the Pharaohs or even that of the upper-classes in Victorian England. Those who use these memes (knowledge resources) with greater determination and efficiency are most likely to control the future. The results of the creative powers of the dominating men have been to create a culture of success that results in parallel creative negation. Witness in recent decades, the passage of the fossil fuel/internal combustion engine memes (from about 1850CE) to 2008. This male-dominated sub-culture has failed to be creative when dealing with the very dangerous side-effects - bad spillover effects -of the successful subculture that created. The "it's not my problem" attitude of the oil and automobile industry towards pollution was not a nurturing, compassionate, loving attitude toward planet Earth. It has been a testosterone-driven male competitiveness in which the rah-rah company colors bespoke their muscular NASCAR sporting attitude. Obviously, if they had encouraged caring women to join them in their power circles humans might have coped successfully with the obvious need to choose less polluting alternative fuels much sooner. The need to do so was obvious over fifty years ago. 
It appears that encouraging more female creativity is necessary for human survival in our challenging future. It is not man but the human species that is playing a dangerous role. We need all the leaders we can get without regard to race, color, creed, gender, nationality, and sexual orientation in making the fateful choices as to which creative outcomes are to become our memes for the global culture that is in the making. We can not leave it up to the specialists or to the "invisible" hand of the market place. These two institutions are not well equipped to cope with the task of rapidly changing for the better our world-wide damaging life styles. Humans have a strong tribal tendency to band together the members of a field to advance the hegemony of their domain. For example, only a few physicists tried to alert society to the dangers of the man-made creation of plutonium and nuclear war-head proliferation. Most physicists could not resist the lobbying for expanding the domain of high-energy physics so grantsmanship proliferated. The Earth is now endangered by the joint threats of pollution from fossil fuels and incompetent use of nuclear reactors (see Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island). More women at the head of these agencies could well have cautioned the bureaucracies that arose to be more protective of the Earth as these dangerous domains grew in power. Scientists recoil in horror at the idea that anyone outside their domain should decide what are good or not good science for human safety and the welfare of the planet Earth. But, logic suggests that without the presence of a much larger percentage of women at the helm we will have male-dominated testosterone driven power seeking outcomes. With such a strong male bias there is little if any reason to urge that we have chosen good outcomes and memes. Though unpopular, it is true that free-markets are not in truth a reality. Good results are often overcome by insincere marketing ploys generated by dishonest toadies and sycophants of those who hold the levers of market power. (Witness the muscle-car mentality of GM in the face of the crying need for more efficient (MPG) autos.) Mass produced commodities are especially vulnerable to being manipulated for short-term benefits. It is difficult to imagine beneficial contributions from watching soap operas and MTV on the home screen, yet, their advertisers drive the culture. What is needed is a self-conscious effort to establish broad priorities that will provide social endorsement of new choices that use a kind of "evolutionary impact analysis." Novelty should be chosen on the basis of the probable future well-being of the whole rather than the advancement of a separate sub-field. This is not communism or oligarchy. Nor do we suggest that good outcomes would always be chosen. Science has often failed in that regard (e.g. Freon and the dangers to the ozone layer). But, the exclusion of women from these crucially important thought processes have not worked well. With women at leadership posts in religion and politics we are more likely to make wiser choices. We need to choose our leaders of creativity from a larger pool of eligibles. Exclusion of women makes no sense.
WOMEN IN SCIENCE
MAY SAVE US FROM THE MEN During WWII, male scientist's eager to help their countries ( on both sides) invented plastics, pesticides, solvents, degreasers, insulators and other materials. These warriors of the laboratories were focused on winning the war. The Allies won. But, WWII left us with a legacy that is silently inexorably ticking away as it threatens our health, or intelligence and the males' ability to reproduce. After, WWII, under the leadership of males, we allowed our great faith in the male-created new chemistry to go forward without adequate testing. One "miracle" after another emerged from labs that provided abundant, cheap, foods, drugs to cure disease and other technology that made life easier and more fun. Televisions, dependable cars, inexpensive and reliable refrigerators brought into our lives new, new, new. In 1962, over the objections of many men with vested interests, Rachel Carson questioned these miraculous changes in our lives and raised serious questions about environmental toxins. After decades of resistance to the idea that many products of modern technology and chemistry were threatening our environment a paradigm shift is now underway. We can not afford to wait for this leisurely pace. The truth is that we are introducing many novel man-made substances that did not evolve along with living organisms over hundreds of million years. We are unwittingly initiating changes in evolutionary biology that are profoundly damaging. Theo Colborn, who got her PhD at age 58 has for years seen a disturbing pattern of illness in the Colorado communities where she worked as a pharmacist. She became an expert in the quality of water. She is gifted with the ability to hold thousands of details in her head while using computer technology to enhance that ability. She began meta-research into the possibility of widely diffused endocrine disruption among animals. There is little glory and no tenure in this kind of work. Fortunately, Dr. Theo Colborn persisted - reading more than 2,000 research papers and 500 government reports about Great Lakes research. This was before "keyword" search was available. Dr. Colburn found
that a startling number of gull and tern nests at the Great Lakes
sheltered twice the number of eggs than they should. Females were sharing
nests because of the lack of a mate. Chemical analysis turned up the
industrial products of DDT,deldrin, chlordane, lindane, and PCBs. The
Great Lakes was a dumping ground for regional chemical industries that
were dominated by profit-minded males with short-run mentalities. There
were a wide range of symptoms, thyroid malfunctions, immune suppressions,
reproductive failures, and genital deformities. She had detected endocrine
disruptions. In 1991, Dr. Colborne invited world class researchers, mostly
male, from many different fields. This generated a statement from the
scientists: In male offspring exposure of the mother results in decreased sperm counts and smaller testes. In females earlier onset of puberty larger uteri, polycystic ovaries, and incomplete vaginal structures, enlargement of mammary ducts and glands in the breasts and an increase in miscarriages. More research by vom Saal showed changes in the brain, learning problems, hyper-aggressive behavior and changes in other human behavior. Chemical manufacturers are continuing to seek out and find researchers who conveniently find that the chemicals are safe. Of eleven studies funded by industry grants, zero identified adverse effects. Dr. Colburn observes that though academic researchers have demonstrated adverse effects at low doses, the industry supported researchers have said that they are not able to replicate the work. One contentious variable, as scientific truth is sought, is the breed of rats used. (Experiments on humans are considered unethical. This is in spite of the fact that during WWII conscientious objectors who volunteered to be "guinea pigs" were used to expedite the research to make available sulfa drugs and penicillin more quickly. Researchers have found that the "Charles River,Sprague Daley" rat was so tough that it barely responded to estrogenic compounds. The chemical industry's funded researchers continue to use the CR SP rat. A deplorable practice. Pat Hunt, a woman geneticist, found that the re-using of worn plastic cages in the laboratory had a bad effect on the mice. Suddenly, 40 percent of healthy "control" mice (in an experiment) began to make eggs with grossly abnormal chromosomes. The expected rate was one to two percent. Hunt urges her fellow scientists to take this seriously, "The mouse is an incredibly robust breeder, while we humans are comparatively fragile." She is concerned about delay. "If we wait for the time when big effects come on the radar screen.We need to ask ourselves if we are going to be reproducing as a species or not." Earl Gray, a
toxicologist, has found very low doses of a fungicide Vinclozolin
administered to pregnant rats produces male offspring born with nipples,
malformed scrota, cleft phalluses, and urethral openings in the wrong
place ( on the shaft of the penis or on the scrotum.) Generally, the rates
for this malformation in human infants have doubled from 1968 to 1993.
These
trends suggest that our male dominated culture is failing to fund adequate
research into this endocrine disruption even though their own children may
be at risk. This is a very serious market failure. Its implications for
the future of the human population are gross. GOD IS A WOMAN ? Some say God is a woman.If the human psyche requires that God be objectified and personified it is more likely that God is an intriguing combination, a joint image of Man and woman. However, because our Earth is dominated by belligerent patriarchal nations we have been forced to a world view of God as more like a male. That world view has brought on an impending catastrophe , an eco-spasm called Global Warming. Rapidly finding solutions to this categorical moral imperative is mandatory. The God Fearers among us know that the world is imperiled now. According to James Lovelock GAIA, the Earth Goddess, is fighting back. Man's mistreatment of Earth is bringing on a Crisis in the Earth's Climate and Humanity's fate is in peril. Lovelock's metaphorical theory holds that the earth is a "self-regulating totality of organisms: the surface, the rocks, the ocean, and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system which strives to regulate surface and biosphere conditions so as always to be favorable as possible for contemporary life. Through a series of processes involving ice ages, ocean algae the weathering of rock, the earth has managed to keep the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and hence the temperature at a relatively stable, habitable level. But, Lovelock argues that because the Earth is already struggling to keep itself cool, the human effluvium from both themselves as large animals and their technology is now an extra increment of heat that is particularly dangerous. Lovelock feels perhaps eight more degrees centigrade warmer in temperate zones in the course of only a few more decades will result in a level of heat that will make it nearly impossible for life as we know it in many places.In this dire scenario billions of humans, males and females, will perish. As this is written in 2008, a new study shows methane leaking from Siberian perm-frost at five times the predicted rate which is seriously bad news.Methane is one of the three greenhouse gases reported along with CO2 and nitrous oxide at the Kyoto Conference. Methane is twenty times more deleterious that CO2. It has already more than doubled in the atmosphere, in the last 150 years, because of macho males' love affair with the use of fossil fuels.Methane accounts for at least half of the greenhouse effect caused by carbon. Will a change to alternative renewable energy sources and energy conservation be too slow to ward off the de-stabilizing damage? Lovelock urges an enormous world wide program of nuclear reactors as the only real option. In the absence of drastic measures taken to curb baby-lust among women to thereby diminish the rate of population increase the prospects are dreary. Just as few think that women will give up lusting for babies, most agree that giving up cheap coal and conserving other fossil fuels to conserve electricity is likely.Both China and India are fostering their rapid growth by building high-polluting cheap coal plants. Some scientists have estimated it would take an immediate 70 percent reduction in fossil fuel burning to simply stabilize climate change at its current planet-heating level. Positive actions can be taken. During the last few years, after the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, Japan heavily subsidized the purchase by homeowners of rooftop solar panels. The volume of demand sharply reduced manufacturing and installation costs of solar roof panels, driving down prices so that by 2008 the government subsidy has entirely disappeared. Germany is erecting over 2000 wind-power mills with the total nearing 20,000. Economic modeling has shown that money spent on nuclear reactors is less effective than adopting an aggressive strategy of energy conservation projects which could produce a much larger payoff in carbon pollution prevention. Examples are, modifying factories to reduce power use and installing improved wind-turbines for residential use with co-generation. [This is not to say we will be able to avoid new nuclear reactors. But of course, we must solve the problem of the disposal of spent nuclear power fuel rods. We have not done so.] What is missing here is that a better future is possible if the cost of fossil fuels was higher. There should be a world-wide (especially in the USA) enactment of a tax on carbon emissions. Al Gore has proposed that we scrap all payroll taxes and replace them with a tax on carbon emissions. But that will only happen with the rapid speedy necessary local, national, and international actions by officials who come together to make it happen- political action. There is too much distrust of the idea that government actions could help make things happen. GAIA is warning us that the world is a global neighborhood that requires cooperation.Working together politically is necessary. John Schellnhuber at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has identified GAIA's (The Earth) 12 global warming tipping points. Any of the twelve are triggers that would likely initiate sudden, catastrophic changes across the planet. Most of us have never heard of these tipping points even though your own genetic legacy , your children and beyond - may or may not survive depending on the status of these interacting tipping points. So what will it take to trigger the 13th tipping point a shift in overall human perception from personal denial of global warming to a sense of personal responsibility to take positive action, now. History has proven that humans are capable of peaceful beneficial changes at a very fast pace. War is not necessary for mobilization of social change. We can retrofit and renovate so called "human nature" Only forty years ago many Americans believed it was human nature that required blacks and whites to live in segregation; 30 years ago human nature divided men and women into separated ways of economic productivity; 20 years ago we overcame the hot rhetoric of male warriors who had rattled their swords to prevent us from using diplomacy to avert a 24/7 global nuclear fusion standoff. Nowadays, given the deplorable fix we have gotten ourselves into it may be hard to believe that the 18th century biologist named us Homo sapiens meaning "prudent, wise." Our history shows that we are not born with wisdom. We evolve into it. We now have the terrifying opportunity to evolve, co exist and cooperate to re-stabilize our good planet Earth.
Hurricane Katrina was a Warning.Lets look at the record of social action.The proactive community, called alarmists by many conservatives, are individuals who hold pro-egalitarian, anti self centered, and anti hierarchical world views. They support government policies designed to mitigate this terrifying climate change even so far as raising taxes. They are taking personal actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the fall of 2008 they comprise about 11 percent of our population.The remainder of the citizenry hold world views that are considerably closer to the alarmists than the naysayers. It appears that public education on the compelling dangers to the "global neighborhood" could be effective. The social loafers (i.e. slackers) and free riders must be made aware that the neighborhood is watching and it wants them to change.The "ozone hole" is a classic example of a condition that has worsened because the social loafers have left it to others to act. Though the so-called alarmists know about the connection between ozone depletion, skin cancers, and cataracts, and declining phytoplankton they can not awaken the interest of the passive mass media to those dangers as we approach the tipping point. Global warming is shrinking the Sahara around its edges.A greener Sahara will emit less airborne dust to seed the Atlantic Ocean to feed its phytoplankton to suppress hurricane formations, and fertilize the CO2 eating trees of Amazonia. Hardly a neighborhood on Earth will look the same if African Sahara tips. In spite of the transcendent importance of these tipping points and the need for all humans to become mobilized to be pro-active in the battle to re-stabilize the Earth, we can not devote much more space, here, to this subject. The Twelve (12) Tipping Points in the Global Warming as the Earth Struggles to Re-stabilize Are:
Educate yourself now. Be active. Donate to pro-active alarmist organizations. Go as soon as possible by way of the internet to the web-site: www.worldchanging.com Monitor it regularly. It will show you ways you can help. By studying this information you will learn that the future life of your children and your grand children is being endangered now. Help your fellow humans to get past denial and deal with the threat of global warming now. Be wary of the toadies and sycophants of fraudulent corporate do-goodery. Talking the talk is not enough. Help those who are walking the walk now. It is customer pressure that has caused Wal-Mart to rethink its position and slowly turn in the direction of acting for the common welfare. We can not depend upon men to do what is right. The history of their deeds belies the good words.It is women who raise and nurture children. True, more and more men are helping.But it is men who are the child beaters and wife beaters.The good men among us have not been able to stop such men for centuries.The human race must call on the women to leadership roles; especially in dealing with the terrifying threat of Global Warming.The future of the children and the women who bore them depends on aggressive pro-active programs and policies. Women Have No Choice They Must Assume More Leadership When white men decided to stop praying to the Mother God, and to pray to the God of War to help them bring peace to our planet; they set us on a course of action which has diminished the role of women, and denigrated Mother Nature. Men know the details. It was men who turned the relationship of humans to Mother Earth into one of exploitation and conquest. The fault is not in the Gods, but in ourselves that we ought to lament.But, man is human. It is rare for humans to point the shaming finger at themselves. The MeetingHouse believes that with men in charge of the planet we are all endangered by their policies. Men Should Give Up Their Control of Religion and Government We need some
shifting of power to women.We realize that it is correct to say that power
does not come in cans.One can not buy it off the shelf. However, we do not
think it is ridiculous to ask that men use their good brains to examine
the question of whether or not they should share the levers of power for
their own good. We need to make major changes in the way we relate to the
planet Earth and use its resources. Think about it;
you would still have control over most of the power used in human society.
Testosterone-driven decisions are still a good way for competitive
businesses and others such as professional sports,NASCAR, and many others.
The market economies demand a male-dominant competitive spirit. But, we
all know there is the problem of market-failure, fraud and the like. We
should have the women as powerful leaders in religion and government to be
a countervailing power to restore the proper moral balance that the planet
sorely needs.Powerful men know that many of the men who rise to lower
levels of power are mere sycophants and toadies. We can do better. Why not
encourage women to share power in religion and government then we
will have a better use of human resources. GAIA, THE MOTHER GODDESS.
GAIA, THE MOTHER OF PLANET EARTH In pre-Hellenistic Greece, Gaia was revered. She is the primordial essence of Earth. One of the creations of Aether and Hedera,the primordial beings of the Cosmos, through the encouragement of Eros, she became the mother of the sea and of heaven.She was the original Oracle at Delphi. In the celestial battle of Taoist traditions, the dragons of heaven are female and male. Yin is the co-equal counterpart of Yang. For thousands of years Isis was the Egyptian Mother Goddess. She had universal appeal along with Osiris. In legend she restored the dead Osiris, twice. The North Star (Stella Maris) or Goddess of the Sea is one and the same. Her regenerative powers were always considered incomparable. Is'tar, is probably the most significant of all ancient Near (Middle) Eastern gods, daughter of the moon and of heaven. She is symbolized by an eight-pointed star. For centuries untold, most humans, while meditating on deity or the universe, envisioned a female being, Goddess (if you will), rather than God. Today, the breakthrough is that the newest is actually the oldest of all contemplative traditions. It is in being, rising now. It is the Goddess. Since the beginning of the Common Era (CE), for over two thousand years, the Goddess tradition languished in obscurity while the world was forcefully taken over by violent male-centered religions and , later- male-created meditative systems. But, with the new epoch that is unfolding we will discover the energetic power of women who are able to be themselves. For centuries feminist women have encountered patriarchal religious systems that elevated the masculine without including mention of the feminine. In fact, suppression has been prevalent and still is in some cultures on Earth. Unfortunately that is an understatement. Today, in some of our leading cultures cruel and unusual actions are meted out by judges on women because they are women, with the approval of the male leaders of their society. For centuries, women have been forced to worship God the Father, without including his feminine counterpart, God the Mother. The recent development is that there is a growing movement that consciously elevates the feminine principle as something divine and nourishing for all humans.
As one noble woman said,"Not until I said 'Goddess'
did I realize that I had never felt fully included in the fullness of my
being as Woman. They had masculinized the home of my soul. My own imagery
of the divine had neutered me." There is a growing consciousness that in feminism there is a search for woman-centered spirit.Meditative traditions once centered on both women and men.That state of consciousness has begun to return as we (women and enlightened men) find strength in the six-thousand-years-old practice of centering human meditations on the Goddess. The Universe is She the Maternal Common to many Goddess-related spiritual paths is the notion that the Universe is a maternal entity. Many Christians pray to Mary, Egyptians to Isis, and Native Americans to the Great Mother. All envision Her as a nurturing endlessly creating force that loves and cares for Her creations. Long before the patriarchal tribes of Abraham and the Brahmans, women and men felt the Goddess's protective essence to be very much a part of their lives, guiding and teaching them, the way a mother protects her brood. Today, people are beginning to rediscover Her again. In this unfolding epochal change there has been an explosion of interest in the Goddess. The result is that Goddess retreats, workshops, and worship services, are held in almost every city, year round, where they are not prohibited by the religious police. There are dozens of new books on the rediscovery of the Goddess. There are excellent video documentaries that explore human beings primal roots and rediscover the feminine principle. Most men do not
understand the nature and quality of the woman's sex urge. It is self
absorbed male conceit promoted by ballads and literature, that the vast
majority of women have an irresistible desire for having sex with a
man.The true nature of the God given urge for women is that it is the urge
to reproduce,"Have a Baby!" Wanting a man is an intermediate need to
achieve the real objective "Having A Baby." Men do not understand, in
part, because most women do whatever they can to make themselves more
attractive to a male with whom they want to reproduce. There is a
profoundly fundamental reason that women will do whatever it takes to have
a baby. Many people feel
most comfortable relating to the Goddess in her guise as the Great Mother.
Or as theologians would have it, "God-the-Mother." They want to follow the
feminine principle and get in closer touch with God , the
Woman? The following
exercise will guide you through contact with the nurturing, maternal
aspect of our Goddess who art in heaven. It may be moving and powerful.We
hope you are ready: I. Sit
comfortably, close your eyes and relax your body. 3. You were once a
child and the child you were still resides in you. Invite this child to
sit on your lap, to sit with you. Place your hand palm up. Invite this
child to place its hands on your hands. Feel the child's hands in your
hands, the fingers warm and trusting, nestled in your grown-up
hands. Empowerment for Women,- the Many Faces of the
Goddess There are hundreds
of thousands of goddesses from spirit traditions worldwide and each
represents a different arch-type of the female. These goddesses range far
beyond the simple virgin/whore, mother/lover dichotomies that we see for
female deities in most patriarchal societies. They encompass achieving
one's goals, cool-headedness, intuitiveness, preservation of the family,
and much, much, more. Nor do these archetypes need to be seen as
stereotypes. For together they comprise the full range of human
possibilities. Indeed, each separate goddess, is a feminist
God. "The image of the
Goddess inspires us as women to see ourselves as divine ... our bodies as
sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as
healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create-but
also to limit and destroy when necessary-as the very force that sustains
life. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our
minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond
narrow, constricting roles and become whole. From STARHAWK The meditations
below are inspired by a great woman. Jean Shinoda Bolen's who set them
forth in her book Goddesses in Every Woman. They serve two
functions: First, they are
ways women (and men) can envision and thus call up needed strengths and
qualities within themselves. Second, as Gloria
Steinem writes, "If a glimpse in the media of a female role model can have
such important impact on the lives of women, how much more profound might
be the activating and calling forth of an archetype within
her?" Athena.
(Meditation: "Help me to think clearly in this situation.") Her wisdom
(she is often depicted with an owl) and role as a virgin goddess symbolize
the part of woman that helps her keep a cool head in any situation.
Undaunted by powerful emotions. Athena is a strong source of
balance and fairness. Demeter.
(Meditation: "Help me to be patient and generous.") Mother, protector,
nurturer, and goddess of grain, Demeter is pictured as matronly and
radiantly golden. Her untiring search for her daughter, Persephone,
after she was abducted by Hades, symbolizes passionate maternal love. As
the personification of "mother nature," Demeter is said to have inspired
early peoples to cultivate grain. Persephone.
(Meditation: "Help me to stay open and receptive.") Spirited away by Hades
to the underworld, Persephone, Queen of the Dead, represents a woman's
unconscious. The ancient world conceived the unconscious, which mediates
between the spirit world's transpersonal realm and that of everyday life,
as "feminine" (and more easily accessed by women). Hence, woman's
traditional role as witches, oracles, seers, and fortunetellers.
Artemis.
(Meditation: "Keep me focused on that goal in the distance.") This virgin
goddess of the hunt always hits any target she aims at. She symbolizes
that part of woman that clear-headedly sets goals and reaches them.
Gaia Meditation "Gaia was the primal Earth mother from whom all life
came. including the Sky God, Uranus, who became her husband."
JEAN
SHINODA BOLEN The Goddess in Every
Woman Below is a very
special meditation on Gaia. Inspired by ideas in As Above, So Below by
the editors of New Age Journal. It will give
you a sense of both your own place as part of the ecosphere and of
communion with Gaia, the spirit of the Earth herself. Be warned, it is a
rather long meditation, and you should schedule at least half an hour for
it. I. Find a good
place to meditate, preferably a spot by a window letting in sunlight and,
presuming it is warm outside, air. Better yet, if weather permits, go
outside and sit on the lawn with a mat or blanket. The closer you are to
nature, the better. Once you have found that spot, get comfortable. Make
sure you are in a position where you will be comfortable for a while.
2. Begin to
breathe. Slowly, deeply, in and out, making sure that you fill your lungs
completely when you inhale, and, squeeze all the air out when you exhale.
3. Begin by tuning
in on your body. What's going on with it? What parts do you feel?
What sensations?
Let any stray thoughts drift away with your exhaled breath. Sense the air
you inhale nourishes you, the oxygen soaking into your lungs, feeding your
blood. 4. Begin to
contemplate the many, many subsystems within your body that are working
together to comprise "you." Every system is a part of another, larger one.
Every system is made up of sequentially smaller ones. Each has its own
identity, yet is part of a larger whole. 5. The smallest
system we know is the kingdom of atoms. Everything is composed of
them.Visualize the atoms dancing in your cells. They were once
dispersed in plants, animals, rocks, water. Now they ar part of you
dancing together in life. 6. Expand your
awareness outward to visualize the atoms coalescing to create our cells.
7. Visualize those
cells. Feel the cells as individual entities, seething with life.
8. Expand your
awareness outward to visualize these cells coalescing to form organs,
bone, muscle, veins and blood. . 9. Focus on your
heart beating. Consider, from the atomic level on out, how many different
collective activities go into making it work. Do the same with your
lungs, your blood, your skin, your stomach, intestines muscles,
reproductive organs, even your bran inside your skull. 10. Expand your
awareness outward to visualize this collection of organs coalescing to
create what you know as You. 11.Expand your
awareness outward to tune in on all the larger systems that surround you
of which you are a part: your society, culture, lover, family, workplace,
friendships, towns, nation, and world. Feel the cultures you are closest
to as living entities, with you as a part of them. 12. Expand your
awareness to tune in on the human race of which you are a part, now
blanketing the globe, swarming in its billions, giving you the context ,
Mother Earth. 13. Expand your
awareness outward to tune in on the entire planetary ecosystem of which
you are a part, animals, plants, oceans, biosphere, stratosphere, and the
cosmos. 14. Expand your
awareness to feel Gaia, the Earth. She is immensely large, immensely
old, Yet, by her own calendar, she is quite young. Each ecosystem is an
organ in Her body, each species is a tissue, each individual animal, plant
or person is a cell. 15. Visualize Her
consciousness, turning to you, looking at you: wise, benign, loving
maternal looking at You. 16. Visualize Gaia
surrounding you with her arms. Drawing you to her body, holding you close.
17. Realize that
this is the situation every day and minute of your life, and give thanks
to Gaia. 18. Take a few
minutes. Breath deeply, Clear your mind. Breath deeply, then count 5 -4 ,
3- 2 , 1 - to end this meditation. 19. Slowly drink a
full glass of cool water. 20. Walk about for
at least 20 , 30 steps. That is all. [Adapted From
Davitch, Victor, The Best of Meditation,
Renaissance Media, Inc., St. Martins Press, 1998. The MeetingHouse
recommends this important source book.] GOD WANTED MAN AND WOMAN TO BE CO-EQUALS
Through out
recorded history males have claimed the right to be first in the use of
the human creative power. We do not know what culture on the Earth would
be if women had been free to make their own independent creative
contributions over time. Surely, it would be better than it is. We
know this because to achieve the human culture as we know it some women
had to dare to break the thrall of male-testosterone driven
prohibitions. Paradoxically, it is a male expectation that much of
the knowledge of how to navigate and advance within human culture is
passed on from generation to generation by the women, mothers,
grandmothers, elementary school teachers, etc. As we verge on
over-populating the Earth, the depletion of non-renewable resources, and
the pollution of the environment under the management regime of males, we
face the possibility that human life may, again, become brutish and short.
The MeetingHouse contends that this will be true unless humans adopt a new
set of values, new ideals and re-direct their energies toward a
sustainable culture with emphasis on love and compassion. Our species has
become dependent on creativity. We need more of it. It is too obvious
that the greatest untapped source of creativity is the creativity of those
women who have been suppressed by men to a subordinate, subservient role
in our various human societies. The gloomy future requires us to do
every thing we can to mobilize women to the task of saving us from the
Eco-Spasm that is now in the making. The record is clear we can not count
on men to do what is right without the guidance of women. Survival of the
species no longer depends on how we use our biological equipment in a
competitive race toward better technology. We need to recognize that
though biochemistry and physics, and the like, are extremely important
that bio-cultural knowledge about political and social systems such as the
arts, religion, politics are for the short-to-medium term of our future
more important. Soon more and more
children will be produced who will not be able to cope due to early
childhood malnutrition and the failure to provide them with an adequate
education to be productive members of their society. There is a basic
law of human ingenuity that humans try very hard to ignore: the greater
the power to change the environment, the greater the chances are that
undesirable (as well as desirable) results will occur. Large-scale
irrigation was discovered about 4000 BCE n Mesopotamia (Iraq). This made
the country (Ur/Sumeria - Babylon) fruitful and rich. But, each year the
Tigris-Euphrates removed a fraction of topsoil and deposited salty
minerals in its place. Overtime this misapplication of technology turned
what had been a bountiful garden into a desert where almost nothing grows
to this day. Man's Mal-Behavior In "Memes" That We Learn And
Transmit To Others The same
mal-behavior patterns of humans hold in the area of "memes" which are the
information that we must learn and in turn transmit to others. For
example, the promises of Nazism, Marxism, Fascism, and the various
religious fundamentalisms provide people with a simpleminded set of goals
and rules. When humans adopt such sets of beliefs (creeds), at first, it
liberates the psyches and a powerful wave of productive energy is loosened
as unhappy humans gain new purpose. Soon however, the downside
appears. Memes-maladies occur: intolerance, repression, rigidity, and
xenophobia. Since the social energies arose because of the promise of
superiority of one group over others when it fails to continue to arise,
wars, or worse, occur under male management. A small minority want to
re-create the environment with the use of diplomacy and
education. But, the testosterone-driven men tend to want to use the
old tools of war, in part because they excite the blood and advance their
careers. It is true that in
the past some human societies survived for hundreds even thousands of
years more or less unchanged once the initial culture capital had been
accumulated. The Egyptians and Chinese were able to do it. But the
male-dominated advances in technology over the last two centuries have
made the choice of a static society impossible. Global communications methods have improved to the
point that knowledge (memes) is now potentially very quickly evenly
distributed in terms of availability. The broadcast use of cell
phones and the internet are our best examples. It is true that in the past
a society that had created complex memes could survive for many centuries.
But, now, no society can any longer enjoy the splendid isolation of,
say, the Nile empire of the Pharaohs or even that of the upper-classes in
Victorian England. Those who use these memes (knowledge resources) with
greater determination and efficiency are most likely to control the
future. The results of the creative powers of the dominating men have been
to create a culture of success that results in parallel creative negation.
Witness in recent decades, the passage of the fossil fuel/internal
combustion engine memes (from about 1850CE) to 2008. This male-dominated
sub-culture has failed to be creative when dealing with the very dangerous
side-effects - bad spillover effects -of the successful subculture
that created. The "it's not my problem" attitude of the oil and automobile
industry towards pollution was not a nurturing, compassionate, loving
attitude toward planet Earth. It has been a testosterone-driven male
competitiveness in which the rah-rah company colors bespoke their muscular
NASCAR sporting attitude. Obviously, if they had encouraged caring
women to join them in their power circles humans might have coped
successfully with the obvious need to choose less polluting alternative
fuels much sooner. The need to do so was obvious over fifty years ago.
The World Needs a Change in the Leadership
Regime Recovering the
shared natural values of the Goddess religions; a sense of community and a
more serene life style will take a major change in the kind of leaders we
have for religions and politics. Unfortunately, history suggests that the
atavistic renewal of belief in magic, astrology, the supernatural, and the
superiority of one's ethnic and nationalistic traditions are more likely.
Encouraging More Female Creativity May Be Necessary
For The Challenging Future We can not leave
it up to the specialists or to the "invisible" hand of the market
place. These two institutions are not well equipped to cope with the
task of rapidly changing for the better our world-wide damaging life
styles. Humans have a strong tribal tendency to band together the
members of a field to advance the hegemony of their domain. For
example, only a few physicists tried to alert society to the dangers of
the man-made creation of plutonium and nuclear war-head proliferation.
Most physicists could not resist the lobbying for expanding the domain of
high-energy physics so grantsmanship proliferated. The Earth is now
endangered by the joint threats of pollution from fossil fuels and
incompetent use of nuclear reactors (see Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island).
More women at the head of these agencies could well have cautioned the
bureaucracies that arose to be more protective of the Earth as these
dangerous domains grew in power. We Are Unwittingly Initiating Changes In Evolutionary
Biology That Are Profoundly Damaging. Scientists recoil
in horror at the idea that anyone outside their domain should decide what
are good or not good science for human safety and the welfare of the
planet Earth. But, logic suggests that without the presence of a much
larger percentage of women at the helm we will have male-dominated
testosterone driven power seeking outcomes. With such a strong male bias
there is little if any reason to urge that we have chosen good outcomes
and memes. Women in Science May Save Us From the Men Pat Hunt, a woman
geneticist, found that the re-using of worn plastic cages in the
laboratory had a bad effect on the mice. Suddenly, 40 percent of healthy
"control" mice (in an experiment) began to make eggs with grossly abnormal
chromosomes. The expected rate was one to two percent. Hunt urges her
fellow scientists to take this seriously, "The mouse is an incredibly
robust breeder, while we humans are comparatively fragile." She is
concerned about delay. "If we wait for the time
when big effects come on the radar screen . . . .we need to ask
ourselves if we are going to be reproducing as a species or
not." Earl Gray, a
toxicologist, has found very low doses of a fungicide Vinclozolin
administered to pregnant rats produces male offspring born with nipples,
malformed scrota, cleft phalluses, and urethral openings in the wrong
place ( on the shaft of the penis or on the scrotum.) Generally, the
rates for this malformation in human infants have doubled from 1968 to
1993. These trends suggest that our male
dominated culture is failing to fund adequate research into this endocrine
disruption even though their own children may be at risk.This is a very
serious market failure. Its implications for the future of the human
population are gross. OVERPOPULATION BY HUMANS IS THE CORE PROBLEM OF
THE NEAR TERM FUTURE. Another example,
we have waited over two hundred years for the American males to start up
an Institute for Peace as an alternative to the original War Department.
Instead, we renamed the War Department the Defense Department and gave the
agency an extremely large building, the Pentagon, as the headquarters for
war-making. The good news is that after decades of work by both men and
women we are on the verge of building a headquarters building for the
United States Institute of Peace at the last buildable space on the great
mall in Washington, D. C. The wife of the great public servant, Dale
Bumpers, is Betty Bumpers from Arkansas. Fortunately, this "can-do"
woman is leading the drive to raise funds to complete the new Peace
Institute. It will be the center of the peace activities of the USA such
as diplomatic non-violent conflict resolution among nations. Mukhtaran
Bibi,(aka Mukhtar Mai), who is the Pakistani woman who was gang raped as
punishment ordered by the elder men of her tribe because her brother
violated local custom, by walking with a girl from a higher tribal group,
which the elders felt had sullied their concept of honor among men. She
deserves to be honored for her courage and determination because she is
fighting the system by continuing to shed light on the problems of rape
and illiteracy despite personal dangers and costs. The above speaks
to the difficulties women have in speaking out. How can we
confront the problem of random and willful overpopulation by way of
excessive reproduction of the specie? We know that China, facing the
possibility of food shortages instituted a policy of strongly encouraging
the famous "one-child" rule to pressure families to curtail baby
production. Surely, no one expects the United Nations or the World Health
Organization (WHO) to start up such an aggressive education program backed
up by a withdrawal of aid to those nations that do not comply. Men
will not do it. What Can Women do About this Seminal/zygote Issue ,
Overproduction of Babies? Help Is Needed To Overcome The Natural Drive, Baby
Lust. Shifting to
smaller families brings generous economic dividends.Investing in
reproductive health and family planning leaves more fiscal resources per
child for education and health care.For donor countries filling the entire
$6.6 billion gap needed to help a woman ensure that her family has access
to services they want and need would yield quick strong social returns. At
2008 dollar levels, this gap could be filled by transferring as little
over one percent of the US Defense Department's annual budget. Women
should not expect the men to do that sensible act. Wealthy
nations'women could do it by taking it out of their personal annual
budgets. As the international organization Engender Health has shown , a
little money can go a long way in this critically important effort.In a
sense it could be a plan to work woman-to-woman; an expansion on the idea
of: "each-one-teach-one."Connections should be quietly made between women
of the West and those in need in other regions.In some situations, because
of male opposition the work to help with family planning must be done
quietly, even secretly. Women should use
their political power to publicize such work as a women's joint effort to
save the planet from degradation. Woman-to-woman it must be shown that
this is an international united effort with or without the cooperation of
the men. Men who want growth of population for more demand for products
will never acknowledge that the human animal is without artificial means
or devices the greatest polluter. We inhale air and inspire oxygen. We
exhale and the expiration of Carbon-dioxide is the result multiplied by
billions of humans.Humans are, relatively a very large animal.The
increasing numbers of human bodies is de-stabilizing the Earth. Flatalence
by humans is methane produced by billions of humans. Far more dangerous
than C02. Sometimes men must
be required to toe-the-line by way of female power. Aristophanes, the
famous Greek playwright showed women the way. In the play Lysistrata (414
BCE) the Athenian women boycotted the men in their bedrooms to bring
an end to a war. Clearly, baby lust can be overcome for a higher and
nobler cause. Women Should Make
Controlled Family Size And Family Planning Their International Cause
Celebr'e. Today, 42
of Earth's countries have stabilized their populations. An even
larger group has reduced fertility rates to the replacement level or just
below, this includes China and the USA. But, a third group of countries,
at current rates, will double their populations by 2050: Ethiopia, Sudan,
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others. The mission is not
impossible. EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE'S PLAN B -3.0 ,
TO RESCUE A PLANET UNDER STRESS
AND A CIVILIZATION IN
TROUBLE. It is clear, that
an international women's' movement should support the Earth Policy
Institute's Plan B -3.0 , To Rescue a Planet Under
Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. The Western economic model ,
the fossil based, automobile centered, throwaway economy is not viable for
the planet Earth.Tragically, China and India and other growing economies
are rushing to adopt it , Homongous growth of more fossil-fuel based
economies. But, a modified sustainable world economy is an urgent
longer-term goal for all humans. It is the burden of the women of the
world to lead this change. It is improbable men will do it. The market is a
marvel at efficiently allocating resources without central planning. It
easily balances supply and demand, it sets prices that readily reflect
scarcity and over-supply. However, it has some major flaws. Some
fundamental weaknesses are: it does not voluntarily internalize the
indirect costs of producing goods and services into its prices. It places
no value on GAIA/Nature's services to the enterprises; nor does it
automatically respect the sustainable-yield thresholds of Earth's natural
systems. Also, it does not respect obligations to the future generations;
it thrives on short-term profits. With the seven-fold increase in global
economic activities since 1950, if we continue without change these market
failures and the economic distortions they create could bring on a
catastrophic eco-spasm of our good Earth.Healthy actions can be
taken. We should not expect the male-dominated enterprises to want to
comply.Testosterone driven competition breeds contempt for cooperation as
the alpha males vie for leadership and control. A nurturing, caring,
compassionate society led by women can and should require changes that
will compel the market to tell the truth to the buyers. PLAN B 3.0 IS THE DETAILED ROAD MAP
FOR OPTIMISTIC POSITIVE ACTION The Earth Policy
Institutes book, Plan B -3.0 provides the detailed road map for
optimistic, positive, action. Below are our sketches of what women
could do through the various international organizations and public health
governmental agencies such as the World Health Organization
(WHO): I.Shifting Taxes ,
Change the tax structures of national economies. Lower income taxes while
raising the levies on environmentally destructive activities. There are
many examples of colloquies that could lead to positive action. One
example, is to change the calculated costs of smoking and excessive use of
tobacco. The Center for Disease Control in the USA calculates the
externalized social costs of smoking cigarettes at $7.18 (US-2008) per
pack.The aggressive public health action of raising taxes on tobacco use
(e.g. cigarettes) could save the lives of up to 4.9 million lives
world-wide. The tobacco corporations are well organized and funded to
oppose such taxes. On the other hand, international cooperation on
the buyer's side of the equation can tip the balance toward healthy
activity. Tax-shifting can help various countries to become producers
of pollution controlling technologies. II. Tax
Innovations such as a Carbon-Use Tax , A carbon-emissions tax would
diminish the excessive emitting of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.
2,500 leading economists and the magazine, The
Economist, endorse environmental tax shifting: "a politically
feasible idea, and desirable on its own terms, would be a long-term shift
from taxing incomes to taxing carbon emissions." In Europe and the
USA, polls indicate that at least 70 percent of voters support
environmental tax reform once it is explained to them. III. Shifting
Subsidies , As the Earth Council observed in a report, "there is something
unbelievable about the world spending hundreds of billions of (US) dollars
annually to subsidize its own destruction." An example of a good way
would be if Iran were to end its $3.6 Billion annual subsidy designed to
lower the domestic price of oil to 1/10th of the world price. By phasing
it out, it would reduce its national carbon emissions by 49 percent. This
would change monetary flows so that the country could do more economic
development. Iran is not alone. The opportunity for a world-wide public
education program is obvious. IV. Eco-Labeling ,
Voting with Our Wallets , Labeling products that are produced with
environmentally sound practices lets consumers vote with their wallets and
encourages producers to internalize ecological damaging costs. Also,
Eco-labeling enables consumers to identify energy-efficient household
appliances; forest products from sustainable managed forests; fishery
products from sustainable managed fisheries; and "green" electricity from
renewable sources. The historical record shows that the male-dominated
leaders of production sources do not care enough about Mother Earth
to do this without pressure. Cooperation is not their game. In fact,
competition encourages the worst practices. All competitors will lower
themselves to the level of the worst competitor to take away his
advantage. It is women that can change the rules of the game.
V. New Method-
Materials-Use Economy , The challenge is to insist that we act now to
re-design the way we use materials so that the methods are compatible with
nature. The throwaway economy that has grown since WWII is both deplorable
and disposable. We should send those ideas to the junk heap of history. A
key example is to increase the re-cycling of steel. The re-cycling rate
for household appliances is said to be about 90 percent. For steel cans in
2003 it was only 60 percent. Re-cycling minimizes mining and energy
consumption, and solid waste management costs, as well. VI.
Accelerating the Enviromental (Ecological) Revolution , Restructuring
the fast growing global economy represents the greatest research
development and investment opportunity in history. In relative scale, the
Enviromental Revolution is comparable to the Agricultural and Industrial
Revolutions that preceded it. The environmental revolution is kin to both.
For example, Agriculture must change back to organic soil use and minimize
pesticides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers. Fish farming
production must be both increased and modified to decrease food-waste
pollution effects. Like the Industrial Revolution, the environmental
revolution will make drastic changes in energy use. We must reduce
supply-demand pressures on our natural forests by increasing more
multi-species as well as mono- tree plantations that follow sound
environmental practices. VII. Aiding the
Populations in Failed States , Some Religious and political practices must
be changed if we are to achieve changes in attitudes in failed states. In
some 60 failed states, conditions are presently in dire
straits. Their leaders are unable to cope with ever growing
populations, disintegrating enviromental life support systems, and the
break down of social services. These nations weaken the capacity of the
international community to help maintain a monetary system, to control the
spread of infectious diseases, and to deal with famine threats. It is
fortunate that the population in these areas still have hope because it is
a sustainer of the coping mechanism. But, it does not produce solutions.
These failed states need re-starts by way of international
cooperation. We have set forth some of the over all program above.
There must be an international program to eradicate poverty to restore the
ability of these fellow humans to be productive. The need to stabilize the
populations, and restore the Earth's natural systems in too obvious.
VIII. The Need for
Women to Spread the Word is Obvious , International cooperation among
women and their own self-organized groups is the best way to make clear to
the males that this must be done now. Men are probably genetically
pre-disposed to respond quickly to a call to mobilize for war. Women
should encourage a wartime type of mobilization that focuses on rescuing
the Planet Earth, which is under stress, and enhancing civilization's
ability to take sophisticated actions to prevent the brutalization of our
human population which is now ongoing. What an
opportunity to serve God by doing service for your fellow humans! "In 2008, the
tragic irony is that the rich countries are so rich and the poor so poor
that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from the rich ones ramped up
over the coming decades would do what was never before possible, ensure
that the basic needs of health and education are met for all impoverished
children in this world. How many more tragedies will we suffer in the
USA, and the world, before we wake up to our capacity to help make
the world a safer more prosperous place not by way of military might
alone, but through the gift of A healthy life itself?" WOMEN MUST MOBILIZE THEIR IMMENSE CREATIVE
ENERGIES, NOW. BOTH TIME AND ENERGY MUST BE INVESTED BEYOND THE HOME TO
THE WORLD COMMUNITY It is hard to find
the words to convey the gravity of our global situation. The MeetingHouse
says - Don't leave it to the men. The historical record does not say
they will do right. We have moved so rapidly into a new world that humans
have not yet fully grasped the meaning of what is happening. Many
more women must no longer focus only on nurturing their family.
Traditional concern for our children has, up until now, been
translated into ensuring their children's health and getting them the best
education obtainable. Women must mobilize their immense creative
energies. Now both time and energy must be invested beyond the home to the
world community. As the great Lester R. Brown and his associate Janet
Larsen and their staff have indicated, we must mobilize to carry Plan B
-3.0 to its implementation stage. Every woman should take up the cause:
push for inclusion of poverty eradication for the wealthy nations; push
for family planning, and reforestations in international assistance
programs. Lobby your husbands and your representatives for increasing
appropriations for these "save the planet" efforts. Call for an important
trade-off less should be spent for military appropriations and homeland
security and more for the Plan B , 3.0 programs. We need advocates on
behalf of children and grandchildren because it is their world and their
futures that are at stake. The Scarcest Resource Of All Is Time We can't count on
the men to lead us in the right direction. Certainly, there are good men
out there who will assist women in carrying out this historic program. But
it is women who must lead with the refusal to procreate in many over
populated nations. You have a major source of power in the kitchen,
dining room, and bedroom. As Aristophanes indicated in his play, Lysistrata, you must use it in dire times. THE RITUAL OF RECLAIMING A WOMAN'S SHAMANIC
PAST The MeetingHouse
has provided you with prayers, meditations, self-hypnosis and mandalas to
help you in moving toward your desire to open yourself to the risks of
doing such major acts as above. The well known leader, Christine Northrup,
MD, in her major treatise: Women's Bodies, Women's
Wisdom , Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing - shows
her powerful empathy for those who choose the path of action promoted
here. She urges you on while acknowledging the risks. We know that
male-dominated churches have from time to time done horrible things to
women such as the witch-burnings in Europe's Middle Ages. Today, Northup
informs us, it is common for women who are re-claiming their power, or
speaking out their personal truths, to have terrifying dreams of being
burned. Dr. Northrup has heard of this countless times in her work. As Dr. Northrup
says, " Breaking the silence takes courage. I know of no woman who has
tapped her inner source of power without going through an almost palpable
veil of fear, often feeling as though her very life would be threatened by
telling the truth.There is no way around this fear except to go through it
with the help of others." Women can reclaim
there rightful share of power by joining together in this noble cause ,
Plan B , 3.0. It can be a quest for personal empowerment. The MeetingHouse will close this essay with a
quote from Christiane Northrup, MD: "Commit to living
out dreams ,one day at a time. This is the process that is required to
heal our families, our communities, and our planet. May you go forth now,
to take a nap, to embrace a child, to feel the sun on your face, or to eat
a good meal slowly, knowing deep within you that the next step for healing
and living joyfully is already there, waiting for you to listen to it,
waiting to be born into the world ,through you, dear woman." The way to love
God is doing service to and for your fellow humans. WEB SITES: www.catholic.com/ANSWERS/tracts/_priest.htm , Women's Ordination to the Priesthood
http://catholicism.about.com/library/weekly/aa082398.htm?pid=2818cob=home Married Priests www.about.com , Search for Women's Religious rights (see Lucretia
Mott) http://world.std.com/-alevin/jewishfeminist.html Adina Levine's Jewish Feminist Resources.
www.coalition.simple.net A forum for members of different sexual
orientation and others who feel all persons are equal before Christ.
www.religioustolerance.org Not a self boosting site. Helps you get to where
you want to go. www.jannah.org ISLAM: The
eternal path to Jannah (sisters) http://www.geocities.com/wellesley/3565 - A Muslim woman's home page? (See the Wicca
part of Lawrence's IDIOT'S Religions On
Line. This source has many witch-related source sites) Sources & Recommended Readings:
Davitch, Victor,
The Best of Meditation, Renaissance Media, Inc.,
St. Martins Press, 1998. Csikszentmikalyi,
Mihaly, Creativity, Harper Collins, New York,
1994 Northrup,
Christiane MD, Women's Bodies, Womens'
Wisdom,Bantam Books, New York, 1994. Earth Policy
Institute (Lester R. Brown), Plan B ,
3.0, W W Norton, New York, 2008 Lawrence,
Bruce, Complete Idiot's Guide , Religions
On-Line, alpha books, Mac Millian, New York, 2000. Encyclopedia
Britannica, is credited as a general source. |
CD version available. 
Throughout most of human history almost all nations
and societies viewed the earth as a Living, conscious beautiful woman,
possessed of divine powers of a god. In Greece, they hailed her as Gaia.
In other cultures - Great Mother, Kujum-Cha, Mother Earth, Ishtar,
Lady Bird, Magna Dea, Mary Mother of God, Danu, and by thousands of other
names. Surely this Goddess goes back to before the origins of the
alphabet, before the beginning of recorded history. The Earth goddess has
been the most frequent object of meditation all over the globe.
Overpopulation by humans is the core problem of the near ,term future. We
have made the point that it may be occurring at a time when reproduction
is risky for the future quality of the human population. The mega trend of
population increase is extremely serious because the social institutions
and political institutions are doing next to nothing about
it. Mal-distribution of food; and bad storage methods, are causing
random-spot famines to threaten. This problem will worsen. The
use of our forests for wood-burning fuel is overwhelming our current
attempts at re-forestation in many parts of the planet. The generalized lack of birth control and family
planning is at the core of the overpopulation problem. Women who want
family planning are being denied such social services by the actions of
leading religions and their male friends who want more babies.
However, the record shows that the fathers can not provide the children
with the proper kind of nutrition, education, and environment that is
necessary to cope with the complexity of modern life. We can not count on
the men to do what is right until the entire world is in crisis. Why
should we wait? Women are born leaders otherwise our children would not
become mature adults.