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The Power of the Divine Feminine in a Dark Time

As the sun moves further away from the Earth, and the days grow even shorter, this weekend, December 6, marks a somber anniversary of the 1989 Polytechnique shootings and caps off 16 Days of Activism on Gender Violence. This blog entry and the ones subsequent will touch upon violence against women in the context of the need for greater respect for the feminine principle that exists in both men and women.
Days marked for remembrance, be they for the tragedy of the Polytechnique, or days like Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day, help us take pause and remember the value of the women in our lives and give thanks. In so doing, hopefully, we become more aware of the important role women play in society through our understanding of health, nature, spirituality and culture as a whole.
Each day of remembrance is like a mindfulness meditation chime that rings in the midst of our sitting practice – a sonic moment that pulls us from indifference into greater awareness. With practice, we learn to live every day with the broader awareness we may experience on these “special” days.
No one is untouched by the love of a woman. All of human life emerges from her body. Whether or not our relationship with our biological mother was close or deep, we can be grateful to our mothers at least for carrying us for nine months and going through the physical pain to bring us into this life.
Similar to the gratitude we can cultivate for our biological mother, we can learn to live in gratitude for our Mother Earth. She provides the air we breathe; she feeds us when we eat and drink; she carries us as we walk upon her; her resources move our lives forward through all we do and make. We are part of an exquisite ecosystem that is her greater body. In this we are abundantly blessed.
Being able to learn to give in gratitude in each moment for the miracle of life itself would help to bring greater equality between the sexes. It is when we feel hard done by, attached to the idea that someone owes us something, that resentments, power struggles and bullying set in. These only serve to polish our egos, keep us feeling separate and distort the true reality that we are all interconnected and created equal as a human family.
Next week, I will discuss more in depth the question of violence, violation, and feeling safe as a woman.