Come
Alive
“Does
the river try to please a tree? Does the bird try to please a stone? In nature,
things are simply who or what they are…I imagine a tree trying to edge itself
over so it can place shade in a different spot. The notion is silly. But I
wonder…isn’t that what I do?”
Paula
D’Arcy
Perhaps
I’m wrong, but it seems that most of us—especially women—spend a good portion
of our lives trying to please others. I think about my mother, for instance: she
spent her entire life trying to do what she thought other people, especially my father, wanted her to
do—she cooked three meals per day, and cleaned up afterward, made all our
school clothes, did the laundry, and hung it on the line outside. She starched
Daddy’s shirts and pants, ironed them, and carefully folded them because, in
military fashion, he liked his clothes folded and laid in a drawer rather than placed
on a hanger in the closet. If Daddy said he liked pork roast, that’s what she cooked.
During the holidays, she made literally a thousand cookies of every kind to
give to all his employees and to the neighbors and to church members. If he
didn’t like something, we never saw it again. My dad wasn’t a tyrant, by the
way. Mother simply did not know what to do other than to serve him. She had a
massive amount of creative energy but felt guilty if it didn’t go to please
someone else.
I grew
up in the days of the patriarchy’s primacy—people had roles to play, and they
did not step outside their lane. I was episcopalian; girls had to cover their heads to enter the church sanctualry, and they could not be acolytes. It wasn’t called Sharia law, but it looked a
lot like it. I heard on NPR just yesterday that this way of life—where women
are kept in traditional servitude to husbands—is being extoled by the extreme far
right as “the way it should be,” and worse, “the way God demands it be.” Male supremacy is being taught to boys and young men as their birthright. It is
one of many attempts to return us to the 50’s when life was simpler—at least
for men.
If a
woman chooses that life for herself, there is no shame in it. But for a woman,
or anyone for that matter, to believe their only value lies in serving, is
simply a sad waste of potential. Women make up just over half the population in
the USA—97 men to 100 women. As we’ve seen recently in movies and in books,
women have always been crucial in science and industry, but they have remained
unacknowledged. As soon as women began to speak out about that lack of
recognition, we saw the current rise of white, and male supremacy. That just
makes me sad for our country.
Whoever
you are, whatever your gender, you are here to be exactly who you are, and to
exercise your abilities to the maximum. You don’t have to be like a tree edging
over to give shade to a particular spot, nor a bird trying to sing a song that
is not yours. You were designed and created to be you—to be your unique self. As
Howard Thurman suggested, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes
you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have
come alive.” Amen to that.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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