(Amazon link)
I found this book to be very moving,
although not exactly what I had thought it was going to be. I'm not
a very politically minded person, and typically I don't follow a lot
of the political debates and struggles, so some of the book was
pretty alien to me. But even in the parts I was completely out of my
element in, I found myself learning about things and hearing the
reflections in my own heart.
I think that some of what makes this
book so very powerful is that the viewpoints expressed in it are so
varied. While I do try to expose myself to views different from my
own (and almost always find that I learn so much when doing this), it
is not always a comfortable place to be. There were parts of the
book that I didn't identify with so much, and parts that I felt very
connected to even though the author and I were very different people.
What really broke my heart was that the
many descriptions of the ways in which women (and men) are struggling
with gender roles and stereotypes is something I see every day. What
I found very inspiring was the many ways that people, all over the
world, are working to fight against these long ingrained perceptions.
I think one of the things I found most
relevant was the point that women tend to turn a blind eye to the way
that other women treat women. And this is something that I find to
be very true. I think that there is definitely value in banding
together, but that in doing so we must keep our eyes open, we must be
brutally honest and call out the limiting attitudes we see all around
us, even when those attitudes come from other women. It is something
I have personally struggled with for a long time, and have always
felt more at home with men than women because of the aggressive and
often two faced nature that many women have taken up. If we don't
recognize that nature for what it is (an unhealthy way of
interpersonal interaction) how can we move beyond it?
A couple of the chapters talked about
the archetype of the Queen. I am a big fan of archetypes, and I
really like the inclusion of the Queen into the more traditional
trinity of Maiden, Mother and Crone. I loved how the Queen was
described, not only as a decision maker but also as one who receives.
I think that many women can benefit from working with the Queen
inside and feeling that sense of self worth.
I also appreciate the many ways that
this book includes men, not only in the celebration of the Sacred
Feminine in the women in their life, but also inside themselves. I
think that gender issues face us all, and that trying to separate
them builds walls that only hurt us. By accepting all the parts of
the self, especially when they don't fit into traditional
categorizations, we open ourselves to true unity within, and that
type of unity leads us to deal with others from a balanced place
instead of one of insecurity.
But I also think that things like the
Red Tent are great tools for women to learn to know and love the
women within. Building a space where women can be and love and
receive is something that many of us simply do not have in our lives
and something we so desperately need (though I do think that men need
their own tent to spend time in as well). What I have always thought
was truly magical about the concept of the Red Tent was that it was a
time for to step outside of the roles and responsibilities we bear
every moment of every day and just be.
There is a beautiful meditation in the
book, where you are led through a method of healing in order to bring
about change on the DNA level. I think the medical community is just
now starting to really open up to visualization and energy as tools
to augment traditional medicine. Meditations like this are really
exciting for me. I think we all have things to heal, and that by
learning to look within for answers can help us to heal ourselves.
I think that this book does a fabulous
job of addressing a huge part of the schism that divides us as a
people. And it approaches this issue with the goal of working with
each of our strengths to move forward instead of pointing out reasons
why we are built to have certain frailties that hold us back. I
think we are poised on the precipice of a huge upheaval in the way
society views itself and the people that make it up, and that gender
issues are going to be a huge part of that. In order to grow and
move forward, we need to examine who we are and where we came from,
and this book does a lot to highlight the many ways in which the
Sacred Feminine has been treated.
As much as I tend to not like to be
involved in political issues, one thing that I walked away from this
book with is that avoiding things like politics (or gender issues)
because we don't like the face they take just leaves them to run
rampant. The political issues discussed showed me that there is a
lot of crazy stuff going on out there that I was ignoring and that by
not being a part of it I was giving it permission to do what it
wanted. I do think we need to all make ourselves a little
uncomfortable and face the things that we feel aren't right in the
world if we want to make it a better place.
This book gave me a lot to think about,
and that is one thing I highly value in a book. Some parts I agreed
with, and some I didn't, but I learned so much about issues I either
didn't know much about or wasn't paying attention to. This is the
kind of book that I think that everyone should read and be aware of,
and that we should start discussions on the ideas it broaches. The
more we bring these issues to light, the more we talk about them, the
more we work to change what we feel is broken, the closer we come to
having the type of society and world that we dream about.
Thank you.
ReplyDelete