Yesterday I opened my phone’s web browser to look for some tickets to an upcoming Storyteller’s performance I wanted to share with my kiddos…only to be utterly shocked at the page that came up.
I have absolutely NO IDEA how this page was on my phone and where I would have gotten there from. I thought perhaps I had been on Rachel Held Evan’s Blog page and that this group was trying to advertise with her – although I doubt even she would be supportive of this group in the sense that she would want their advertising dollars….but that this would certainly be a topic she would address. I hit the back button to check, but no…I had not gotten there from her site.
I checked my email thinking perhaps I had gotten there from some email I had been sent (for try as I may to get off some of the mailing lists I used to support I seem unable to do so). But no, I did not get there from there either.
So what website is it, you are asking?
It is the National Head Covering Movement website. An aesthetically appealing website if I say so myself…but one I had never heard of until this moment and one that I must speak my truth about.
As I read one of the blog posts and about the “movement”, I could literally feel my blood temperature rising and my tongue start to form many words that were plunging out of my brain at a mile a second.
While I do plan on addressing this “movement”- that is, surprise surprise, being spearheaded by a man – and how it is such a useless diversion in so many ways…it was a reminder to me of what I have set out to teach and share with the women (and hopefully men that will listen) on what I have found and continue to find:
Women are not subject to some “creation order” set by some men at some distinct point WELL INTO THE history of our species. The logic of this is absolutely illogical. For most of our species existence across most cultures of pre-history and even well into history, the facts show that people long associated the birth of humanity with Women…which only makes logical sense since this continues to be the way most species on the planet continue to be in existence.
Women are not defined by men – but have every authority in and of themselves to name for themselves WHO they are, WHAT they are and WHERE their authority comes from based on this historical facts AND our own innate wisdom we can tap into.
Women have been denied this right not because it is “creation order”and thus natural law (which really came from Plato and Aristotle – not Jews, jews just adopted it), but because as history will show us, we subjected ourselves to this order for the continued survival of our species well after the need to be in this “order” existed.
This history sought to make man (do not read mankind thus including women) the center of the universe and thus women and eventually the feminine became the peripheral. Men became and are the norm while women have and continue to be the deviant to the norm. This thought process was cemented into our reality through language, education, the family and government structure and more…all of which were dominated by men over the last 4500+ years.
As women we cannot wait for men to stand up and claim our equality, our independence as unique and beautifully created human beings, nor to justify our existence in the “order of creation”. This is only something we can recognize and claim for ourselves – and we will do this in large part when we return to the qualities that make us different and unique and use those qualities to define our world.
Oh, there is much more I could write about these “self-evident” truths I have found over the last year that point to the fact that the Bible – while having rich Spiritual truths – was also very much a document created in the heart of Patriarchy which sought to take over, control and maintain that control over the population through highly guarding women’s sexuality in favor of Her reproductive uses for a society favorable for Patriarchal structure. So much of what we read in the Bible – when read in the context of those times was FOR this use.
But here is the good news – and please hear it my dear sister. Our human race is not limited to the “history” of the Bible. Our sisters and brothers have walked this earth in Harmony long before the wars we know of started.
As I move forward with this blog, I will be discussing more along these lines – and will be pulling in what we have been taught from the Bible as well as the Western Culture – which actually started way before the Bible was even imagined.
This time before the Bible, before what we call civilization, before patriarchy was a time when the creation order was always out of Woman – for a woman was where babies literally came from and in their “primitive” minds, the logic of Creation being a woman just must have made sense…
….for out of the dark, pregnant void of the womb all of life springs…
Next time, I will give you a brief over view of the true history of our race in order to set the stage!
