image ‘Silence Talks‘ by lepiaf.geo, Flickr

In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, the adult female grows fierce when the cubs are threatened. And we….? ~Marianne Williamson

We women are protectors of the children and of the earth. Look at the love in this woman for her child.  You can feel it.

In the Iroquois tradition, it was women who held the key responsibility of deciding whether or not to go to war, for they considered, fully, the effects of war on the children, on the generations ahead, and on the earth itself. We love our children. But we, today’s women, have been deeply conditioned out of trusting our own instincts, our feelings, and our fierceness.

Earlier this year, there was a story in the NY Times about women in India who could not feed their children. I remember reading it, and looking at the accompanying photos of these beautiful women with their starving children, and realizing just how deeply we have been conditioned to believe we have no power. What stopped these women from doing ANYTHING they could to feed their starving children? When I wondered this, I turned the question back on myself. What stopped me from doing anything to feed my starving children and grandchildren? It’s not that they don’t have enough food. They do. For now. But, and this is the important message that is now coming out loud and clear, we women know deep inside that there is something horribly wrong with the way things are in the world. As Marianne Williamson expressed, our cubs are threatened. We are all threatened. We feel it in our bodies, for we feel the wounding of the earth and all children in our bodies.

As I read this article, I felt rage that these women had no hope to feed their children, and complete wonder at how our conditioning is so strong as to kill the instinct in us to do whatever it takes to get food in the mouths of our babies.

A beautiful woman, Diana Stone, has written a book that will be released in the spring of next year. She came to speak to our Institute of Sacred Activism workshop in September. She told us that the Iroquois have said that women must stand and speak. It is time for women to stand and speak.

The time is now. I have heard this too many times to be able to hold back any longer.

The time is now. For women to speak. For women to stand and speak, to voice what they are feeling.

The time is now for me to speak, as a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother.

We are facing this challenge each and every day. What greater challenge could there be than the end of the world in the way we have known it to be. I stepped my toe into the waters with my post on Living Gratefully. But that was not enough.

Enough is enough. I spent the afternoon, yesterday, with two of my three grandchildren. When I look at them, I wonder what kind of world they will live in. I wonder how long they will get to live. I wonder how much suffering they will endure, simply because we, people who have the ability to do something about the state of affairs we find ourselves in, have done nothing to really stop the anguish of the earth, to stop our own greed, to stop our separate ways.

Yesterday, I received this long quote from a dear friend. It is an excerpt from a book she is reading, Wisdom’s Daughters (2002), which contains the words of Women Elders of Native America. The woman whose wisdom follows is Vickie Downey of the Tewa Tesugue Pueblo.

It is the time of the feminine. With a woman that is what we feel. When I look around at the different women, I see sadness and a heaviness within themselves. What they are experiencing is what the earth is experiencing — her sadness and heaviness because of the way her children are living today. Women, they have that; the feeling is there in their hearts more so than the male people, cause the male is always doing things. The male also has to realize that he has a female part to him and he has to start feeling that same feeling.

Women have to be recognized. The words of women have to be recognized. The women will come out. It might be prophesied or doesn’t have to be prophesied, but the feeling is so strong that women will come out and voice their feelings. Whether people want to hear it or not, it is going to come because it is meant to be. It is that time.

Most women can’t comprehend what it is. They feel it. It is like a depression so they go to psychiatrists, therapists, trying to figure it out. Or it turns into physical ailments. Feelings into physical ailments. So they don’t know. They know something is going on but they cannot pinpoint exactly what it is.

As people, as native people, we are trying to do our best to tell the world this is what is happening to you. This is what is happening to us. This is what is happening to the earth. No matter how many words we give them, how many books we give them, how much information we give them, it won’t help them until they finally decide “well, I am going to accept this. I am sick. I am a sick society. I am a sick world. I am a sick person.”

When we do that we can heal. Then we turn around and we help each other. Then there will not be homelessness. Then we won’t have hunger. We won’t have wars….

So, the message is coming through loud and clear. This is the challenge, and it is here, now.

The Dalai Lama recently surprised listeners when he said, “The world will be saved by western women.” We women in the west, have the more power, resources, and connection to each other than women have had anywhere in the world for many, many centuries.

All over the world, now, women have the ability to voice what is happening, to stand and speak, whether it be to each other, to their neighbors, to their government, or to each other through. We can speak through many means, which blogging is but one.

Two great quotes have been swirling in my head for some time, now.

You must learn not to be careful. Diane Arbus

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you! Isadora Duncan

These words take me back inside, where my feelings and instincts as a woman reside. My fierce love was tamed, made dormant and silent. But we were once wild here, and we are still wild within.

What will it take to stand and speak, to grow fierce and vocal?

Image by Yogendra174, Flickr

This post is part of The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge (by blogger Gwen Bell):
Day 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

I’m participating in Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Day 8: Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a mother and a grandmother. I am a mother to two daughters, who are mothers to two sons and one daughter. My grandson is eight and his brother is 7 months. My granddaughter is 15 months.

My younger grandson was born in April of this year. The journey leading up to his birth was filled with moments of many emotions, but most noticeably trust, hope and yes, fear.

His brother, who is now eight, is a most amazing soul. He was born with a heart defect that went undiscovered until he was about twelve hours old. What unfolded after that discovery, was enough to make any human being wonder about the grace of God, or lack of any grace at all in the world. What this baby, and his parents, endured, made me question, at the deepest level, if there is a God. In the middle of the darkest moments of this baby’s first three months in the hospital, one full month in critical condition, I railed against God, not understanding at all how I could be at peace with what my beautiful first grandchild was having to endure in his first days and weeks of life; and, what his parents were having to experience. All I wanted to do was keep them safe. But, I couldn’t.

At one dark point, I took myself into the hospital chapel, shut the door, and swore I would not leave until I could ‘be with’ the way things were. I knew I wasn’t any good to anyone until I faced what it was I was unwilling to face. I prayed. I wept. I prayed. I begged. I wept some more. And then, exhausted with my own fighting against what was, I finally began to pray in earnest. No longer were my prayers about asking for what I wanted. In my exhaustion, my prayers were prayers of surrender. They were prayers of letting go. They were prayers of vulnerability, of complete opening to hear, really hear, what might be there all along, just waiting for my receptivity.

Finally, when I was quiet, open and receptive enough to hear, I heard a voice tell me that, in this moment, all was well. All was well. And with the voice, came a deep, undeniable, peace. The kind of peace that passeth all understanding. In the midst of one of the most painful moments of my life, I felt the kind of peace that moves beyond all measure of description. In this peace, I was able to go back out into the world, into the Intensive Care Unit, and really be there with, and for, those I loved.

Eight years later. My grandson is doing better than anyone could have imagined, considering the lifelong complications he faces. I won’t go into details, as those are sacred, private things that only he and his parents have the right to share. He is a most precious being, and such a teacher to us all. Life hasn’t been easy, but the peace comes when I don’t fight what is.

So, in the days leading up to this most amazing boy’s brother’s birth, I watched his parents prepare for the arrival. They were so excited and so courageous. The decision to have another child had been made with a great deal of conscious contemplation. The doctors all said the chances were good that this second child would be fine, yet they stressed there were no guarantees. There never was a definitive conclusion as to what had caused my first grandchild’s heart defect.

Early on a Tuesday morning in April, I sat in my grandson’s room as he slept. His mother and father were at the hospital, ready to give birth. My other daughter had just called to tell me that her sister was beginning to push, and that the baby, a boy as well, would be born at any time. As I waited, I sat again in prayer. For some unexplainable reason, I didn’t beg for all to be perfect, or just as I wanted it. I asked for all to be well. It’s not that I had somehow learned to be holy and accepting of all things difficult. I hadn’t, and haven’t. Yet, in this moment, when the chips were down, I was led back to the peace that defies description. I was led to open my heart to the eight-year old miracle sleeping in front of my eyes, to the miracle that he is.

As I sat in prayer, a presence, thick and deep, filled every atom of the bedroom. It filled every cell of my body. It was Grace, pure radiant Grace. It bathed us both in Its light. Grace stayed for the better part of what I believe to have been two minutes, although time left when Grace arrived.

I was pulled from this presence when my phone rang. It was my daughter calling to tell me her sister had givem bith to this new little boy. He had arrived and he was fine. His mother was fine. The birth was easy. All was well.

In this moment, I felt as if the weight of eight years had been lifted from my body. In this moment, there was such relief. In this moment, there was peace. Twelve hours later, when all was still well, I was holding this new little one in my arms, knowing that there is, indeed, Grace.

We can’t get to peace. We can’t get to Grace. Grace is always here. Grace is always holding us. It is when we let go of everything we demand of it, that we find ourselves filled with the peace of Grace that is beyond definition.

image attribution:   JamesH. is now Near Earth, Flicker
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattleye/ / CC BY 2.0