| Unbinding the Feminine by Sheila Seclearr The feminine energy of love and compassion is a naturally expansive energy, robust and glowing, like a healthy pregnant woman or a fertile plant. The creative seed may be spawned in quiet darkness, but within that nurturing space is the collective information necessary for the development of seed, egg or idea. This yin energy is a powerful creator of healthy environment, whether for crop, embryo or community. The creative feminine reflects our world in stories and art with the information needed to understand our humanity. Yet there is little in our language or leadership structures indicating the power of feminine energy. On the contrary, our language reserves powerful adjectives to define masculine: vigorous, brave, heroic, strong. The definition of feminine includes words like delicate, tender, docile, submissive. The immediate social dilemma is less about activating feminine energy than about unbinding the stranglehold placed upon it by centuries of culture and language. I recently published a novel with a main character whose mother died as a child. I ranted against my muse, begging for release from a storyline I felt was timeworn. "How often can we hear the plight of the motherless child?" I raved. But my muse was unrelenting. I ended up with more than one orphaned character. The motherless child appeared early in Negro spiritual songs of being uprooted from the motherland. Appearing in classic poetry and novels (Jane Eyre) and in contemporary stories (The Secret Life of Bees), the child is relegated to a life without the benefits of a parent's care. Even Frankenstein's monster (created by a motherless child, Mary Shelley) was excused from his behavior because he was left to fend for himself. Could anyone raised without love behave differently? I suspect that we'll continue to hear the tales as long as we keep the feminine in exile. If our collective psyche is raging against the bound-up energy of the feminine, what might produce our common unbinding? Each of us, in quiet meditation, retreats into the timeless womb of seedling beings, equally male and female in the instant of creation. Balancing yin and yang, feminine energy yearns for full and equal partnership with masculine. If the dignity of the feminine will be restored, women will deliver their reflected truth into the world. But more challenging is the call for men to honor their feminine energy. American culture has a tremendous tendency to revile anything considered feminine appearing in the character or reflection of a man. It's considered a great transgression to feel the so-called "delicate" nature of the feminine in a society where men are supposed to be tough and valiant. Why can't we recognize that the feminine is just as tough and valiant? Reflecting the truth of one's own heart can be the most difficult task of some people's lives. Ask a gay man who has come out to his family or community. Ask a visionary woman who refuses to follow the quiet trail of her foremothers. Ask why we don't have a word 'foremother' in our American lexicon. Traveling into the backwoods of American history, my novel's orphaned characters guided me through colonial Pennsylvania prior to the Revolutionary war. It was a profound time when the energies, masculine and feminine, met on America's Eastern coast. A bold, exploring, technologically advanced people, masculine yang energy, sailed over the sea and met the Native Americans who, perhaps more than any other people anywhere, believed in the sacredness of the earth and all things upon it. Feminine yin energy was evident among the native people who held women in high esteem, sharing leadership roles and honoring their wise council. Meetings between the Native Americans and the colonists took place in the woods, in the native languages. A main author of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin, entered politics as agent to the treaty meetings whose notes his company published. Thousand-year-old stories taught the new people about union and explained our relation to all things. The new arrivals were convinced to unite with a common government and goals. I'm an American writer, fiercely proud of the freedoms my country endows, self-expression being only one. But I fear that my colonial forefathers, brilliant and enlightened as they may have been, failed to understand the full message of union. Then again, perhaps we the people are just now evolving to understand all that was intended. In the ensuing years of conquering and silencing, nearly extinguishing the heart of our motherland and native people, we have bound the feminine. Patriarchal tradition was stringent among the colonial Europeans and English. When the natives taught that everyone in the village had a voice, the translated effect was that Caucasian, male landowners got a vote. That alone took centuries to evolve. Strong hearts and powerful compassion will tell the feminine story in art, literature, even in embedded journalism. There will be evidence in our ecology, our world affairs and our family of humanity, that we are related to all things. When we honor the earth, when both men and women create safe nests of nurturing support to protect the earth and all her children, all the information of love and compassion will be there, as robust and powerful as nature herself. Sheila Seclearr is the author of A Tree on Turtle Island (Open Passage Press, 2003), a tale of contemporary travelers in Pennsylvania and their mystical introduction to the colonial frontier at a pivotal period of American history. She lives in Evanston, Ill., where she also has a practice as a Reiki master/teacher. Contact her through Open Passage Press, (847) 328-9634 or e-mail ss@atreeonturtleisland.com. Visit www.atreeonturtleisland.com Copyright © 2003 Sheila Seclearr |
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