From: I sit listening to the wind: 4

~ by Judith Duerk ~

  How might your life have been different if, late one afternoon, near the end of the summer, as you thought of the opening of school…and of trying, again, to learn to use your mind in traditional ways…something wondrous had happened?If the women who were your teachers had invited their young women students…even the littlest girls…to come to sit in a circle…and, of course, you went, too.

If you had sensed the excitement in the voices of the teachers as they spoke of a different way to use your fine, young minds. And you could feel the wonder of women sitting in a circle, under the open sky, just outside the school…gathered to share their wisdom with the younger women in their care.

How might your life be different?

   How might our lives, as women, be different if there were a place for us to go when we were in dreadful conflict within and at odds with our women friends…when we had already struggled with our conflict and couldn't make sense out of it…A place where we could be with women more settled than ourselves…women who had deeply worked with the truth of their own lives?If we could spill out to those women our confusion and feverishness…and they would listen quietly and gently, but then point out clearly to us the source of our upset within.

And the honesty and patience of the women…and knowing that we were heard…would somehow soothe our pain and allow clarity to emerge.

How might our lives be different?

   How might it have been different for you, when you were terribly upset and full of harsh self-judgement, if there had been a place where you would be received by a woman whom you trusted?

If the woman had listened in silence as you began to speak? And there had been a feeling of such simple acceptance that you were able to weep…finally, able to weep out all of the confusion and pain that you had held inside for so long.

How might your life be different?