Several years back I had a vision. One of the statements in the vision was God saying to me, "You are a woman and your name is Donna." At that time my thoughts about the feminine were very negative. I had never cared about being a woman, for I felt the feminine was powerless. I felt she was a servant to the needs of the masculine. The feminine in society was degraded, outcast, bitter, jealous and not respected. This caused me tremendous pain.
My recollection from the first woman was, of course, my mother. She was a slave. That is how she saw herself, I'm certain. She cooked, cleaned, took care of all the household needs and was paid five dollars a week from my father for her spending money. My father made all decisions. Our vacations were fishing trips where she cooked all the meals again and cleaned the cabin. I can see now why she was a very angry woman.
After the vision I realized I had only seen the submissive and angry side of the feminine. Now, I welcomed the challenge to see the whole woman. I examined every article, read every book I could get my hands on a about the feminine. I learned she was mysterious. She had her opposites. She could paralyze with her poison, or be receptive and nurturing and receiving. Her wisdom could be found in the depths of the earth. She was life and death.
Helen Luke became one of my favorite writers. The Laughter of the Heart of Things, Dark Wood to White Rose, and Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On were three of her books I read. She impressed me so much that I visited Apple Farm in Three Rivers, Michigan, at the community she founded and found the feminine wisdom and beauty for which I had been searching. Two statements she wrote caught my attention: "The instinct of the feminine is to use nothing, but simply to give and receive. This is the nature of the earth -- to receive the seed and to nourish the roots; to foster growth in the dark so that it may reachup to the light. If we can rediscover in ourselve the hidden beauty of this receptive devotion, if we can learn how to be still without inaction; how to further life without willed purpose; how to serve without demanding prestige; and how to nourish without domination, then we shall be women again of whose earth the light may shine."
The second statement of Helen's wisdom, "Disaster awaits a woman who imitates man and will certainly be inferior. A woman is born to be essentially and wholly a woman and the more deeply and consciously she is able to know and live the spirit, the "Logos, within her the more she will realize this truth. Modern woman must discriminate and relate to the image of the masculine spirit within her, while at the same time maintaining her roots in her basic feminine nature -- that which received, nourishes, and gives birth on all levels of being through her awareness of the earth and her ability to bring the water of life from under the earth. All her true creativeness in every aspect of life springs from this."
Helen Luke seemed to be talking to me personally. I could see for the first time what I had been doing all along. Unconsciously I was living through the masculine -- what psychologists would call the negative animus. I tried to fit into this man's world as a man with his big phallus and power instead of having the courage to find the woman within. I didn't know her, accept her, or love her. To love and accept the feminine being was necessary to change how I felt about myself. That is what it would take to change my image and love myself and others as the Spirit loved me. If I could do that I could have my resurrection. |
