PLEASE get the focus off the Fetus!

A disapproving commenter says:

I see you consider the fetus to not be a human. At what point do you believe it becomes human? Is the partial birth at 9 months considered not human? Frankly I find this hideous! As for me: I believe that the mother does have a reasonable choice. But there comes a time when the child can sustain life outside the mothers womb and be fine...it is at that point that I would consider it not okay to abort, a purely selfish choice, GIVE IT AWAY, don't throw it away.

I'm bumping her comment up because I want to talk about what makes a human being. A lot o people want to take the magical view that a fertilized egg is human and has rights. That's very romantic, but it's just an opinion. In nature, fetuses and embryos are produced in much higher numbers than are intended to survive.Nature doesn't expect every zygote to reach personhood.

Even Judeo-Christian tradition doesn't attribute human status to the unborn. "Ensoulment" was believed to take place at the babies first breath outside the womb. The religious fervor around the issue of Choice has no basis in scripture. It's the opinion of a Pope, and frankly, I haven't seen a pope yet that made the lives of women a priority. Until I do, I recognize no authority for them to influence women's lives. The Protestant objections to choice are purely superstition. Again, there's nothing in the bible that forbids or discourages abortion.

From The Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

What the Bible says about Abortion

Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not considered a human life.

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. -- Exodus 21:22-23

The Bible places no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old.

And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver. -- Leviticus 27:6

Fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered persons.

Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD. -- Numbers 3:15-16

God sometimes approves of killing fetuses.

And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. -- Numbers 31:15-17

(Some of the non-virgin women must have been pregnant. They would have been killed along with their unborn fetuses.)

Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. -- Hosea 9:14
Yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. -- Hosea 9:16
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. -- Hosea 13:16

God sometimes kills newborn babies to punish their parents.

Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. -- 2 Samuel 12:14

God sometimes causes abortions by cursing unfaithful wives.

The priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell. And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. ...
And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. -- Numbers 5:21-21, 27-28

God's law sometimes requires the execution (by burning to death) of pregnant women.

Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. -- Genesis 38:24

The Abrahamic deity doesn't give a damn about babies - the only goal is to control women's sexuality by the most brutal means imaginable so that a clear line of patrilineal inheritance can be assured. Now that we've dispensed with the patriarchal nonsense, let's look at science.

When do we consider a person dead, or at the point where we can legally consider ending their life if they are on life support? When brain activity has ceased. I therefore consider a functional brain to be necessary to define a living human. Such a brain doesn't exist in a fetus of less than 5 months, and most states don't allow abortions this late in the term except in cases where the mother's life is threatened. When push comes to shove, the actual life of a living mother MUST take precedence over theoretical life. We can argue whether we define an unborn child as having rights or not, but the mother most certainly has rights, and those must prevail.

Our culture is not oriented to support mothers and children. A woman with an unplanned pregnancy may have no income, no safety net, no child care, no escape from an abusive partner, no way to work and sustain a child. Women in a culture that is designed to control and subjugate them need options, and abortion needs to be one of those options.

It would be great if people always used birth control and birth control always worked. It would be great if a woman could devote 9 months of her life to creating a child to give away without disrupting her own life. I'd love it if every pregnant woman became so by choice, with no violence involved or poverty looming. In my perfect world, every child would be considered a gift and would be wanted and loved. That's not the state of our civilization, however, so our options in an unwanted pregnancy might be imperfect as well.

Women who are raped have no conscious or fair choice. Women dependent on an abusive partner may also have no fair choice. A woman who may, or WILL, die in child birth has no choice if she is to survive. An uwanted child can be born with health problems and or emotional damage inflicted on it because the mother is under stress during the pregnancy. These kids often have attachment disorders that prevent them from bonding with anyone, including adoptive parents. Life isn't ideal or fair.

Ultimately, the greatest burden and responsibility is that of the pregnant woman. Her rights must come first. Her choice must be hers and hers alone. As a civilization, we need to recognize that a woman is an autonomous being, with the right to control her own person, and no man, no government of men, and no "god" invented by men has any business telling her what she can and cannot do with her womb. Any coercion in this respect is a form of rape, and slavery, and these have no place in a democratic society of free citizens.

'Witches' burnt to death in Kenya

BBC NEWS | Africa |

Oh. My. Goddess!

This has to stop. I don't care if you believe magick is real, or nonsense, or whatever, but this cannot be tolerated anywhere by anyone. We have to get under the entitlement that tells people they have the right to kill someone for Witchcraft. I don't care if the victims were or weren't, did or didn't - no one has a right to kill someone else for this or any reason. STOP IT!

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL A HUMAN BEING, NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE!

This must be the basic understanding that is the foundation of our civilization. You don't have the right to kill. Period.

You don't kill Witches.
You don't kill gay people.
You don't kill immigrants, documented or not.
You don't kill women.
You don't kill children.*
You don't kill people who never did a damned thing to you, no matter where they live.

I don't care if you are a cop, a soldier, a parent, a spouse or a lover.

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL.


*A fetus is not a child. It might be a human someday if the mother so chooses, but it isn't human yet. The right lies with the Mother.

Echidne on Feminism

Go to Echidne. Read posts marked Part I: Inhale and Part II Exhale. My comments on part II:

Because of time constraints and laptop problems, I couldn't read all of the preceding comments, but i do want to comment on this issue. I'm not really old enough to be a second wave feminist, and I'm definitely too old to be third wave. I guess I'm a two and a half. Anyway, I haven't really written about the presidential campaign since Edwards and Kucinich gave up because I've been struggling with just this question - who is the remaining feminist candidate? Before, I was quite certain it was Kucinich, though there are some feminists that give me crap about that. Now, I'm torn as to what to do.

I usually call myself a matriarchist, which is a "feminist plus" - in my mind. There are a few issues, like pornography, typically lumped in with the tag "feminist" that I'm not in sync with the Sisterhood about. I am most definitely a Sister, though, I'm quite sure.

My perception of second wave feminism is that it was always about social justice, and that the broader purpose was lost when people had to whittle down their mission statements to apply for funding. Funding is bad - it obligates us to and limits us by the patriarchy we're supposed to be trying to destroy. Yes, I said and mean that we should aim to destroy it, not get along with it and not try to make it more woman friendly.

The human race is 54% female, and the other 46% includes a wide array of variations on the original theme. The first step to making progress is to get out of the artificial patriarchal binary. There is one original gender and a variety of adaptations, the most common of which we call "male" but it's certainly not the only one. One and many. E pluribus unum, as it were.

Anything that affects 54% of a population, and that 54%'s children, is a human rights issue as well as a feminist issue. These terms are synonymous, and it's time we really drive that point home to the boys on the Left who aren't really feminists at all - they just play at it to keep their incoming links count up. A pox on the ones who claim to share our goals then quickly sell out our reproductive autonomy when it gets in the way of their insider status. There is a very real enemy in this world and it's old, white, wealthy and male, though not all of the enemy meets all those criteria. Not all rich white men are bad, of course, but they have to try harder to make me take them seriously, as should any person of privilege who claims to empathize with an oppressed minority - even if said "minority" is 54% of the population. There are people of all races and genders, of all social classes who are with us and against us. The trick is to find those who are really with us and stick together.

Comparing "isms" plays into the hand of the patriarchy. It divides poor whites from poor blacks, lower class women from upper class women with means and access, lesbians from hetero women, and on and on. Divide and conquer. We fight over Obama and Clinton, McCain wins. It's that simple. The only way to defeat the old rich white male system is to approach it differently.

When the Constitution was originally written, the person with the most votes was president, the one with the second amount of votes was vice president, no matter what their party affiliation. If we look at the original intent of the Constitution, there's a clear solution - let the party decide whom to name president and whom to name vice president, and let's get on with it. Or we could just say that Hillary is older and has more experience, so make her P and Barack VP and let's focus on the real issues here. Barack could run for President in 8 years and be a shoe-in. What is clear is that we need to settle on a Clinton/Obama ticket NOW and waste no more money sniping at each other. That's what THEY want us to do. The media moguls and the power brokers are laughing their asses off at that "bitch" and that "uppity u-know what" doing their jobs for them. The key to feminism has always been inclusivity. Social justice for everyone IS feminism. Why waste obscene amounts of money, that could be put to better use, perpetuating a fight that gets us nowhere?

McCain is a nutcase and he has virtually sold his soul to get that nomination. He would be a disaster for America, and that is where our focus should be. Hillary and Barack need to make nice and focus their efforts outward. That's the only way we move forward. United. Anything else, and we lose. We can't afford to carve up the injustices - there's plenty to go around.

First Post (of the new year), First Nations....

Lexx had the following comment to the story of Lakota Secession:

Morgaine,

I would have suppported the Lakota withdrawl unilaterally had they went to the other Native American Nations and consulted them in effort to build a unified Indian Nation.
The article did not mention any such attempt, but rather the Lakota delivered the message to the US, then sought out Bolivia, Venzuela and other National governments to build support of this move.
The they embolden themselves by offering a Tax free residency in thier lands(extended to everyone). That in of itself negates the Idea of Lakota Lands independent of US Jurisdiction- in essence Mr. Means, and by extension the Lakota are trying to replicate a revamped version of the United States. If So, why secede then?
Im sure the honorable intention is there but it is ill concieved. With out the backing of the other Nations, and by this I mean Native American Nations, the measure will fall flat on its face. The US government will have to do absolutely nothing to make it go away. The Lakota have done it already.

I'm bumping it up because there's a point I don't want y'all to miss. There is no united "Indian Nation" and it wouldn't be something most Native peoples would want. Each Indian Nation sees themselves as an independent people - except for the Iroquois Confederacy and some similar arrangements, the tribes function autonomously.

The idea that they are making a "revamped United States" is backward. The United States is a revamped Iroquois Confederation. Most Native tribes were matrifocal democracies. Some of the democracies that functioned before the arrival of Europeans are still in place. The idea that that the USA is the first democratic country, or that our democracy is based on ancient Greek philosophy, is untrue. The Founders of the United States were largely influenced by their interactions with the First Nations, even as they were committing genocide against them. The only influence Europeans had on Indian government was the introduction of patriarchy, which was a giant step backward, and the sooner today's tribal governments realize that and get back to the old ways, the better. Patriarchy ruins everything it touches.

People have mixed opinions of Russell Means. Some people think he's a publicity hound, others think he's a freedom fighter. I think he's waging a political battle with the tools available to him. Whether he succeeds or not, I think he's doing the right thing. It's a step in the right direction, even if it takes several tries to make a go of it.

Why I find myself unable to post anything.

1. My uncle is dying. I couldn't say we're close, but he's the only one in the family with a clue about who I really am. He calls me Gypsy. We're doing a lot of traveling these days to visit him, take my dad to the doctor, etc. Any day now, my uncle will slip into a coma from cancer that has moved from his lungs to his brain. That sucks.

2. The weather is too good. It's still in the 80s here. We have a serious drought on our hands.

3. The news is too bad. The Democrats are either too lame or making too much money to oppose the Bush junta. Bush continues to dismantle the Constitution. Blackwater is committing murder. Our troops are dying for no reason. Darfur is in the grips of its 4th year of genocide. pResident Bombs A Lot is going to attack Iran, and I don't even want to think about what could happen there. If you've got friends in Israel, tell them you love them.

4. Halliburton is coming to Kentucky. People here think liquifying coal is a good idea - it isn't. Why does progress here always involve a deal with the devil?

4. I'm taking art classes and I can't decide whether to talk about that here or start yet another blog on this site. Then that begs the question should I redesign this site. Or change servers. Change domains? and on.. and on.... it never ends.

5. I'm having an identity crisis. I am completely unprepared to have lived this long. I figured I'd never make 30, yet here I am at 46. What do you do when you can't be who you want to be? Who am I? What am I? What's the point? Why are people so much dumber than I am so much more successful at almost everything? Why do my days feel like they're an hour long? Do I leave my hair long and dark or cut it off and bleach it blonde, which will piss everyone around me off? Why do I alternate between feeling numb and feeling ovewhelmed? Why do my dreams feel more real than my waking hours? Why can't I paint? I could go on like this for hours, and do...

6. I'm worried I may lose my health care. I'm stressed about money. I'm getting nothing done on my book. I hate my clothes. My room is a disaster of epic proportions. My sick mother needs more from me than I have to give.

I could go on, but you get the point, if there is such a thing. I'll write more when I can do something besides whine.

Peace.

To ODE Magazine: Move beyond the Binary!

So much to say! This is a post, a letter, an appeal, and an attempt to sort through my own feelings. I’m reeling from tragedies on every level, from the horror at Va. Tech to wondering if the malignancy on my father’s scalp has metastasized. He has surgery Wednesday, and it will be a while before we know where we stand. My mom isn’t doing well and I am overwhelmed with everything that needs to get done.

The tragedy in Virginia could have been prevented if VA refused to sell guns to anyone who, voluntarily or not, had been hospitalized for suicidal ideations. That shouldn’t even be considered gun control. It’s just common sense. The videos shown by NBC et al did give us some important information. It indicated, as did some of his other writings, that Cho might have been molested and/or struggling with issues of homosexuality. They reminded me of the stuff that Valerie Solanas wrote before she shot Andy Warhol - just streams of sexually charged obscenities that didn’t really say anything. It also showed that the guy who says nothing is the one with the most to say. I keep hearing Eddie Vedder in my head singing “Cho Seung Hui spoke in class today.” What a black irony that it scans the same as “Jeremy.”

Goddess bless the victims and their families, and help them find comfort for their grief.

The following is my venting that resulted in reading this month’s ODE magazine. It’s an amazing magazine and I really recommend that people who are committed to creating a better world subscribe, or at least check the website frequently. This was one of those issues where nearly every article wound me up because they’re so wonderfully close, but just don’t get it yet.


Some relevant articles in the May 2007 issue of ODE Magazine:
Pg 4 Marco Visscher states the modern need for the abolition movement because of continuing slavery around the world.
Pg 5 Max Christern relates former soccer star MIchel Platini’s desire to set soccer fans free by taking away the barriers. He believes that people will behave like adults if they are treated that way; put barriers in front of them and they will naturally rebel against them.
Pg 7 the Letters page with responses to a previous “god or not” article by Neal Donald Walsch called “Is God [sic] a Delusion?” re:Richard Dawkins most recent screed against “religion.”
Pg 10 Diana Reynolds Roome writes about the new education of exiled Tibetan nuns in “Sisterhood is Powerful.”
Pg 12 “Surprise Down by the Sea” biologist Mike Barandiaran “[the brown pelicans] were getting bombed left and right all around, but somehow they managed. Nature is persevering.” (She is, indeed!)
“The Secret Economy” cites information that 44% of people’s time in Western nations spent doing unpaid domestic work while they are volunteering 1 hour for every 14 of paid work, creating value that can’t be measured in dollars.
Pg 14 “The Good Don’t Die Young“ “benevolent, altruistic people live longer, stay healthier and experience less stress” because doing good works creates the release of endorphins.

...and more, which I’ll talk about below.

****************************************************

Dear ODE:

There is no word for the odd mixture of joy, optimism and frustration I experience when I read ODE Magazine. People are SO CLOSE to catching on, and there are so many people of all stripes - actors, doctors, scientists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, mostly male - hitting all around the problems we face, but they don’t have the vocabulary to really get to the heart of the matter.

Take a deep breath, open your mind, screw up your courage and say the word: Goddess

That is the single, underlying theme that your contributors this month danced all around but couldn’t find a word to describe.

Most people will have a knee-jerk reaction at the use of that particular word. Are you picturing kooks in black Egyptian make-up? Hippies? Angry feminists? (I’m all of those, but read on, anyway.) The monotheists will hear blasphemy; the rationalists, superstition. I’m asking for neither faith in what I say nor belief in that which cannot be proven. Instead, I’m asking you to try a new frame for your own observations that can bring disparate and seemingly contradictory concepts into a unified whole. Moreover, it is a real and tangible whole that speaks to the deepest part of our psyches as well as our DNA, and that concept is Mother.

I know you’re a more enlightened group than most, but no one is perfect so try this: Set aside all your conditioning that says women are weak, emotional, secondary. Forget about popular concepts of balance, yin and yang, polarity, 50/50, either/or, black and white, good vs. evil. Reducing our reality to two opposing forces creates opposition, conflict and stagnation. It is divisive and damaging. It creates the idea that if I am to be “right” then you must be “wrong”; That might, wealth or divine decree create an entitlement for some to rule over many and for those rulers to hoard wealth and influence while enslaving, raping, plundering resources and committing genocide, all with the blessings of their “heavenly father.” “Somebody has to be in charge,” they say, and they claim to be the Chosen who have dominion over everyone else (the infidel) and the Earth as well. These are patriarchal concepts that have nothing to do with Nature, who always prefers Her own gender. Humans are 54% female. Using the reductive reasoning so common in Western thinking, we should refer to ourselves as womankind, since women comprise the majority of the race and since every one of us began as female in the womb. Why don’t we? I’ll come back to that later.

Both “rationalists” and religionists see the Earth as a thing that can be conquered, manipulated or controlled. Some picture an old man with a white beard deciding to make himself a world, fashioning a man from mud and a women from his rib. Others think “god” is a delusion and that we walk on dead rocks among senseless plants and dumb animals, while only we are blessed with the ability to reason. Many experience the world but are not of the world. This is not only incorrect, it is not logical. Logically, we cannot exist apart from Nature because we are a part of Nature. There is nothing rational in believing that humans stand apart from the rest of existence.

Our ideation of existing separately is a combination of hubris and ignorance that causes us to tune out our own experiences with the living and sentient life forms around us. In "Native Intelligence", pp. 28 - 32, anthropologist Jeremy Narby, calling himself a “diplomat between systems of knowledge,**” advocates incorporating the knowledge of indigenous people into our world view. The article cites studies that show mold can navigate a maze to find oatmeal; that bees are capable of abstract thought with a brain the size of a pinhead; that plants process information about the world around them the same way the neurons in our brains function; and that there’s a plant called the dodder vine that knows which sources in its surroundings are the most nutritious and a stilt palm in the Amazon that very slowly “walks” about, following the sunlight by extending roots into the light and letting the ones in shade die off, effectively moving it from place to place. In anthropology, the belief that plants and animals have consciousness or intelligence is called “animism.” The Japanese, we are told, call it chi-sei, “the capacity to know.” A shaman might call it magick (with a “k”); a scientist, superstition; I call it Goddess, or the more recognizable Gaia, using the latter when referring specifically to our own planetary ecosystem as a living entity. Call it what you want - it all leads to the same conclusion. Universal connection within one whole entity. When we cut her up into genders, countries, sects and sides we damage Her and our experience is poorer for it.

Narby wants us to know that everything is alive and everything is connected. This is not a new concept to my readers or the Goddess movement at large, but it is radically different from the consensus reality of the West. He and some biologist colleagues even participated in ayahuasca ceremonies which yielded new information in their fields for each of them. He stops just short of realizing that the world is a living (parthenogenetic ergo female) being. Nature is our living Mother who gave birth to us in Her womb, the ocean, through a process called evolution. That process is repeated in the development of a fetus in the womb. She’s alive. She’s conscious. We are interconnected parts of Her living body.

Paul Hawken gets closer in “The Instinct to Save the Planet,” pp. 39-45, wherein he understands that humans have acted like a cancer in the body of Earth and he perceives a growing, multi-faceted “movement” which he cannot name, but which he likens to the Earth’s immune system fighting back through this loose but growing web of between 1 and 2 million grass roots activist organizations. He identifies three roots of the system: “environmental activism, social justice initiatives and indigenous cultures’ resistance to globalization.” He doesn’t address the ties most of these groups have to the feminist movement, let alone acknowledge that Gaia, in true homeopathic form, is healing what Al Gore calls Her “fever” by using “like to cure like” - humans run amok have created Her illness, and something in the undercurrent of humanity is spurring people all over the globe to take healing action in a way that is unprecedented in our history.

This process is being facilitated by the growth of the information matrix described in "The Power of Many", pp. 34 - 38, which talks about the self-organizing tendencies being harnessed by various organizations and web entities. We have a natural drive to share, to help each other, and to make things better. That drive is being expressed in new ways on the web as well as social and political events which are beginning to abandon hierarchical structure and linear formats. The drive for justice, the defense of nature, the abandonment of hierarchy, growth from the bottom up instead of power directed downward are all essential facets of the Goddess Movement, and the awareness and connectedness that Hawken and Narby are crusading for are succinctly described as Goddess Consciousness. Hawken states that there is no ideology that encompasses all facets of the movement he has noticed or “heal all the wounds of this world”; I propose that there is one that he either doesn’t know or hasn’t seriously considered, and it is Goddess.

Have you felt uneasy with the way I punctuate sentences, specifically in terms of capitalization? Does is seem odd to give Earth gender? Does it seem strange to say Goddess and god? Feminists in the 70s addressed the gender inequities in language but they failed to take it into the realm of religion. It’s time to challenge the assumed preference given to “god/Yaweh/Jehovah/Allah” in all of our printed matter. It’s time to recognize that these are in fact one deity and one only, whose scripture declares him to be jealous of others.

Back to my question about Womankind. Why don’t we call ourselves by the logical term? Why is talking about Goddess more uncomfortable than talking about “god?” Why can “god” create a world, but Goddess not BE the Universe and Gaia the planet? What if the Big Bang was actually a primordial orgasm that set life in motion? That discomfort with the Feminine Divine is the political effect of 6,000 years of patriarchy and monotheist brain-washing.

In its quest for power, Western civilization has sacrificed connection - men are divided from women, races from one another, humans are divided from Nature, our minds are divided from our bodies. That brain-washing says that women in power are dirty, evil and dangerous, not to be trusted. The abuse heaped on women like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi has a common origin with the idea that women must be swathed in burkas and the windows of their houses painted black. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are really one religion dedicated to the “god” of Abraham, each frozen at different stages of its development, and the scriptures used by that religion’s many forms have been crafted, reinterpreted, and twisted to keep women out of power and under the control of men, because women equal wealth - children, dowries, unpaid work, sex. It is no accident that the majority of people who live in poverty are women and their children. We are told that this is to be expected. People are naturally greedy, lazy, selfish and violent. War is inevitable. Evil is everywhere. We are told repeatedly that this is a normal condition for humans, and most people have never questioned it because they’ve never known anything else. There is another way, if we are willing to change our minds.

On this we can agree - human beings have been successful as a species because of our innate desire to be helpful to each other, and our ability to make individual sacrifice for the good of the group. There is a societal structure that is inclusive, participatory and just. There is a system that eschews hierarchies and strives for sustainable use of resources and equal distribution of wealth. It is probably the natural order for human beings - familial clans that trace their lineage through the female line, sharing child care and production of food and goods among them all, every member participating in and contributing to the common good of the group. Many matriarchies still exist in many pockets in the world. In the United States, the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Nation has strong matriarchal roots that helped influence the Suffragist Movement. The Mosuo of China retain their matrilineal structure and have no concept of marriage or dominance. New matriarchies are forming in Africa to give women refuge from violence and exploitation. I hope we’ll soon see communities of single or abandoned mothers and their children forming small woman-centered communities with cooperative child care and related services. What if we re-worked abandoned buildings for poor women’s families? Or if a group of families simply chose to form a web of support for each other?

The shift in consciousness that your contributors yearn for us to make so that the numinous movement arising from grass roots around the world can flourish is a return to Goddess Consciousness. Use it as a symbol or a frame or a poetic expression of a scientific concept if you prefer that to religion, but whatever importance you ascribe to it, you will find that it is an extremely pragmatic view. It just works. The Goddess is not “out there” somewhere. She is you, your neighbor, the food that you eat, the air that you breathe. The “god or not” debate perpetuated by Walsch and Dawkins misses the point entirely. It’s not about what importance we put on some ancient scrolls that may be nothing more than the dreams of some hash-smoking nomads. It doesn’t matter if you call it Nature, Magick or Quantum Mechanics - it’s all the same multifaceted field of energy and matter that vibrates in space inhabited by our consciousness, following the same natural laws and forces whether you can name them or calculate them or even know they exist. You don’t have to believe in gravity to fall down, and you don’t need to believe the planet is literally a girl to reap the benefits that would come from acting as if you did.

I participated in a blog carnival called “God or Not” for a while, and learned a valuable lesson. The objections raised by rationalists against “religion” were only true of monotheist religion; none of them considered a monotheast and/or polytheist system at all before rejecting all religion. The religionists were nice, but not terribly good at making an argument; the rationalists were angry and rude, and only a little better at supporting their positions. Eventually, the project failed because the religionists tired of the obnoxious behavior of the rationalists. The same problem affected both sides: Fundamentalism. Humans go through three basic levels of moral development. First, they are driven by reward and punishment - “mommy will spank me if I do that, give me a cookie if I do this.” Then they move into a phase in which they see the world in concrete terms, and look to external authority, whatever that may be, to define morality for them, whether they behave in a moral way or not. As kids, they follow the rules and expect things to be fair; they learn to obey the law (or not) and do what the Bible says (or not) and they don’t question those systems - they simply parrot them or rebel against them, but they don’t challenge their validity, only their own agreement to follow them or not. That is Fundamentalism, and it doesn’t matter what you believe - just how you express your belief. You can take the Bible literally, get your cues from the Taliban or be a staunch defender of science a la Dawkins, but if you assume that your chosen authority is infallible and you cannot imagine that you might be wrong, you are a fundamentalist.

To admit that you might be wrong is essential to the survival of our world. We are in a situation where most of the world is stuck at the adolescent level that thinks in concrete terms. We can begin to understand abstract concepts in our late teens, but most people never mature to that stage. At the conceptual level, you can consider that your reality is not the only one; that you might be wrong; that some other person/view/culture/religion/political party might be right; that somebody else might know something you don’t; that everyone might be wrong, or we all might be right; or that there is no right or wrong at all. At that stage, you look at available information, and you reach your own conclusions, which may change in time as you continue to learn new things or incorporate new experiences. We are, in a very real sense, having growing pains. Our challenge is to drag the concrete thinkers out of their adolescent black and white world into one of infinite possibilities because you aren't likely to strap a bomb on yourself and go to the market if you realize you might be wrong. That’s an entirely possible process. The irony is that, as Fouad Laroui points out in “The Many Sides of Allah,“ pp. 52 - 59, the majority of fundamentalists are violently defending misconceptions, and really know very little about their own religious doctrine. We need to challenge those misconceptions when they arise, and we do that with dialogue and education.

Goddess can do all of this - She’s good at weaving webs with every kind of connection. She loves learning and wisdom, philosophy and poetry. She holds teaching, nursing, caring for children, the elderly, the sick and the destitute, singing, dancing, art, prayer and sexuality as sacred activities. She’s generous, loves us unconditionally, loves diversity, urges us to care for one another, make the most of what we have, to share, to grow, to prosper and live in harmony as one body. That’s a practical, positive image to work with and it has been with us since the beginning of time.

The state of women in a culture is the state of the culture itself. On the back page of this issue, Greg Mortensen, who educates girls in Taliban country, says “you can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated, a society will not change.” A few people make a lot of money by keeping us at war. How will we ever have peace when the people at the negotiating table don’t believe peace is possible? If they’re making money from the war? How will we overcome pollution if people in power profit from it? How would our political discussions, our religious rivalries, our economic goals and environmental awareness change if someone at the table represented the Goddess openly and fearlessly?

If you want a better, more peaceful and humane world, the future is female

Peace,

Morgaine Swann, H.Ps.

**(My word for that is “Witch”)

Damn you, Harry Dresden!