There has been no shortage of shocking news during March's month of madness. Despite the UN calling for a happy day this past Friday, it has not been happy for many. After two weeks of vigorous seminars and panels on the plight of violence against women across the globe at the Conference on the Status of Women, where all sorts of inspiring efforts are being put into action to lessen the physical and psychic damage on the feminine, Friday's news brings yet another story of unspeakable cruelty towards an innocent.
Some of Kabul's male citizens decided to play morality police and beat and burned alive a 27-year-old woman who was accused of burning the Koran. Apparently, the victim may have had learning issues, not that that matters. It is the men who committed such barbarism who have issues -- they are all completely mad.
That these men have cell phones and are leading supposed modern lives committed this atrocity in the diplomatic zone of Kabul, where so much international monies have gone to aid Afghanistan is shocking. That any religious leader would defend this murder, beyond words.
As my cosmologist friends tell me, a solar eclipse is a force majeure, and if this act, on the last official day of the CSW and the eclipse, doesn't bode for a rapid shift into another type of consciousness, then when will it ever come?
Nigerians girls are abducted, women are raped daily, elders are tortured as witches, gay and transgender people are being persecuted, and our Mother Earth is trying to hold it together as she too has been decimated by the greed of capitalism and so-called progress.
We have plenty of statistics: One out of three women have experienced sexual violence and so forth. IAWRT, The International Association of Women in Radio and Television have been brilliantly reporting at the CSW on the percentages of women working in media. Who's delivering the stories that really pertain to women's needs? The facts are presented; now let's get on with changing the story.
The Lacanian therapist from France started her talk by describing her own burgeoning sense of herself as a youngster when her mother constantly told her early on that she wasn't good enough -- she was a girl. The power of language perpetuates myths in societies where patriarchy has gone amok.
As we come to the great spring religious holidays -- Easter, Passover,etc. -- let's think back on traditions that predated Judaism and Christianity, taking place in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Women's birth was revered and honored, symbolized by eggs and blood. According to the archaeomythology , decorated goose eggs were found in graves dating back to the fourth century, and Persians celebrate Norooz with red colored eggs 3000 years ago. The pagans celebrate Ostara, the uterus, life-giving, estrus, Easter, eggs. You do the math.
So can we make this a time of rebirth and celebrate a reawakening of the feminine in all of us -- where the masculine allies itself with the feminine instead of being in competition and destruction with it? It takes real courage to wake up from a sleep like the one our consciousness has been in for so long. It is enough suffering. Dayenu.