Category: Of Interest to Women

Living the Divine Masculine

This article courtesy of www.extatica.com–Enjoy!

an interview with Shantam Nityama by Rebecca Walker

RW: Tell me a little bit about what you do and how you came into this work.

SN: I started out twenty years ago doing bodywork as a component of spiritual mentoring. Basically, I wanted to help people integrate what they knew spiritually into their everyday life. To have knowledge of a spiritual perspective and to implement that knowledge into your daily living are two completely different things. As people came to me for spiritual instruction, I began to realize most of them had deep repression that was not allowing them to accumulate the energy needed to develop spiritually. Each time I investigated the source of this stagnation, most of my discoveries revolved around the person’s sexuality and/or sexual energy channels. How the person is handled as a child or as a young adult around sex or sexuality related issues impacts them in their adulthood. As a young person the amount of shame, guilt, confusion, ignorance, and fear tied to the sexual energy was overwhelming. Continue reading “Living the Divine Masculine”

Yesterday I Cried by Iyanla Vanzant

Dear Readers,
After a day of recieving the news of the world…natural distasters, political upheavels, corporate schemes to disempower and victimize, I also recieved this sweet piece from a priestess sister. Hmmm…very fitting indeed! When was your last “good cry”?

Blessings,

Anyaa

Emergence Graphic

 

I came home, went straight to my room,

sat on the edge of my bed,

kicked off my shoes,

unhooked my bra,

and I had myself a good cry.

I’m telling you,

I cried until my nose was running all over

the silk blouse I got on sale.

I cried until my ears were hot.

I cried until my head was hurting so bad

that I could hardly see the pile of

soiled tissues lying on the floor at my feet.

 

I want you to understand,

I had myself a really good cry yesterday.

 

Yesterday, I cried,

for all the days that I was too busy,

or too tired,

or too mad to cry.

 

I cried for all the days, and all the ways,

and all the times I had dishonored,

disrespected, and

disconnected my Self from myself,

only to have it reflected back to me

in the ways others did to me

the same things I had already done to myself.

 

I cried for all the things I had given,

only to have them stolen;

for all the things I had asked for that

had yet to show up;

for all the things I had accomplished,

only to give them away,

to people in circumstances,

which left me feeling empty,

and battered and plain old used.

 

I cried because there really does

come a time when the only thing left

for you to do is cry.

 

Yesterday, I cried.

I cried because little boys get

left by their daddies;

and little girls get forgotten by their mommies;

and daddies don’t know what to do, so they leave;

and mommies get left, so they get mad.

 

I cried because I had a little boy,

and because I was a little girl,

and because I was a mommy

who didn’t know what to do,

and because I wanted my daddy to be there

for me so badly until I ached.

 

Yesterday, I cried.

I cried because I hurt.

I cried because I was hurt.

I cried because hurt has no place to go

except deeper into the pain that

caused it in the first place,

and when it gets there,

the hurt wakes you up.

 

I cried because it was too late.

I cried because it was time.

 

I cried because my soul knew that I didn’t know

that my soul knew everything I needed to know.

 

I cried a soulful cry yesterday,

and it felt so good.

 

It felt so very, very bad.

 

In the midst of my crying,

I felt my freedom coming,

Because Yesterday,

I cried with an agenda.

 

(from her book Yesterday I Cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving)

 

If Men Could Menstruate: A Political Fantasy by Gloria Steinem

A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior – even though the only thing it really does is make the more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis-envy is “natural” to women – though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb-envy at least as logical.

In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless – and logic has nothing to do with it.

What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? Continue reading “If Men Could Menstruate: A Political Fantasy by Gloria Steinem”

Conjure Women: The Importance of the African-American Woman’s Fight Against Racism…..By Priestess Mona Reeves

Below is an excerpt from my master’s thesis Conjure Women: The Importance of the African-American Woman’s Fight Against Racism. It refers to Cassandra Wilson and her Blue Light ‘til Dawn CD. I ran across part of it unexpectedly and was quite inspired, so inspired that I did not want to keep it to myself, and so I am sharing it with you. The portion in italics touched my heart today and I am grateful that God saw fit to channel such words through me.

She has embodied the spirit of Sankofa– going back to learn from the past in order to move forward in the future-and even has an acapella chant on Blue Light that she created herself entitled “Sankofa.” This song is a call to the ancestors for guidance and strength, an acknowledgement of their power.

Oh Sankofa, high in the heavens you’ve soared,

My Soul wants to follow you,

Back to yesterday’s moon,

Will it remember me?

Back to yesterday’s sun,

It will rekindle me.

Rekindle the spirit into tomorrow and high on the wind,

Sankofa flies again and again.

Wilson performs all the vocal parts, creating intricate harmonies with a hauntingly spiritual quality. It has the hum of Negro spirituals, the drumbeat of Africa. It is a call for connection—connection to the past, present, and future. It is a powerful reminder of the power and the strength of the African spirit which lies inside African Americans. It is a call to awaken that spirit in those who are unaware of its presence and a boost of support to those already connected. It is about touching the heart, opening up to the light, and living in the world from a place of power. It is a call to shed the victim role, release occupation of the place of the downtrodden, and claim our rightful place in the scheme of the human landscape. It is about being a Conjure Woman; taking energy, stirring it up, and creating positive change with it.

Mother’s Day Proclamation – 1870 by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.