Feminine vs. Masculine

Circle vs. Square

“In a circle there is no above and below, ahead or behind. Everything is equidistant from the center. The center of the circle for a woman is her heart, the Inner Light, the intuition, the voice of God. Her journey is one of orienting to the center of the circle so that she can hear guidance that always comes from within and use it wisely for the greater good.”

Joan Borysenko (A Woman's Journey to God)

My church moved into a new building a couple of years ago. I was/am on the committee that located a new space, saw it through renovation, and equipped it. The congregation managed to get through the arduous and lengthy process with a minimum of conflict---until we got to the 'meeting' room. The men on the committee wanted a 'conference table and chairs' and the majority of the women wanted an open room with a circle of chairs. The battle was waged and caused more than a few ruffled feathers. The men won (of course) and we now have a long, narrow conference table and comfortable chairs on rollers. We like it most of the time, but a couple of Sunday's ago, our adult class grew too large to meet around the table. More than one woman reminded the men in the class, “We told you not to get that darn table!!!”

Women are naturally given to meeting in circles as attested to by the “Ladies Circle” of yore. I'm not suggesting that women don't know how to be hierarchical, they certainly do, but they also know how to be concensual. One of the findings of the study reported in the book, Men are from Mars-Women are from Venus, by John Gray, Ph.D, was that men prefer to communicate in a clear, direct (some would say commanding) manner and women perfer to come to a mutual agreement. Men find the way women come to consensus vague-to-partly- cloudy, and women find men dirctive and pontifical. Ahh, well, that's a story for another day.

The spiritual journey also tends to be different for men than for women. Men like to 'master a series of steps' while women prefer to 'spiral toward the center'. One is not better than the other; they are simply different. For men, climbing the mountain is a good vehicle for the journey; for women walkin the labyrinth or sitting in a drumming circle works best. However we take the journey, we all arive at the same place—at our center, at the One Heart.

In the spirit,

Jane