A Woman's Strength
The Sspirit of the valley never dies.
It is called the mysterious feminine.
Where the valley forks is the gateway
to all the mysteries of woman.
That place where the valley forks
is called the root of heaven and earth.
We can only dimly see this place,
this root of mystery, the spirit of the valley.
Yet we can never exhaust its strength.
--Chinese Tao te Ching
In daily life - in the halls of power, on the front pages of newspapers, even in the family - this power is often invisible or subjugated.
I find it more than a little ironic that this should be the meditation of the day before I return to Egypt. It gave me a lot to think about, and not in the way that many, I'm sure, would anticipate.
Just before the Winter Break - must stop calling it the Christmas Vacation - we had our parent teacher conferences at the school... and without many exceptions, it was the woman of the family, the mother, that was the 'hardest' on the children when it came to expectations of the children and their behaviour and attainment in school. There is also a song by Youssef Islam (Cat stevens to you and I), on his album I Look I See called your mother, which questions:
Who should I give my love to?
my respect and my honour to?
Who should I pay good mind to?
After Allah
And Rasulullah
Comes your mother
Who next? Your mother
Who next? Your mother
And then your father
(you can find the song on youtube here)
On the other hand, just before I left the US, Mir and I watched a movie called The Fighter which explored the concept of a girl that was training in Kung Fu, who was a Muslim, and forbidden by her father to attend a club that was mixed gender. (That's oversimplifying it a lot, but...) It was set in Turkey if I remember rightly, and portreyed the very male dominant side of things - though I have to say that the women in that film were in many ways quite strong too.
I think it goes to show that even in the most seemingly masculine of faiths, the feminine refuses to lie completely quiescent.
So then, here we are and the meditation of the day is concerning the strength of the feminine - a concept not at all strange of foreign or even questions by many pagan paths. (There are a few masculine paths, don't be mistaken by my bias here), but on the whole, most will lean the bias heavily toward the feminine and Goddess energies. Maybe that's because of the masculine bias in so many other faiths... I don't know. that answer seems somewhat trite to me, even though it could be as easily true as not.
Anyway, does following a divine feminine path allow for more easily tapping into those feminine strengths within myself. I'm not sure that it does. The emotional side of myself, certainly, and that's stereotypically a female kind of thing... too much sometimes, but other strengths - I'm not sure. It would be something I would like to explore further, perhaps. Sit down with some paper and draw it out - maybe even literally. I'd like to think that I have other feminine strengths inside me... strengths I can draw on - strength that can help me nurture, in a better way, myself and those I love. I don't think I do well enough in that respect in many ways... too many.
But perhaps that's what this is about... reconnecting with the feminine, not just coming to know the goddess again.