Nomination For Edublog

Copy this link http://womandivine.blogspot.com/2009/10/brave-brutalized-women-of-liberia-fight.html. Goto edublog site, scroll down to Nominate This blog till Dec 08 . Thnx a bunch!

Nobel Peace Laureates Award Annie Lenox 2009 Peace Prize

Meeting in Berlin, a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates have awarded Scottish singer Annie Lennox their own peace award for her work with women and children suffering from AIDS in Africa. The World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates was meeting for the tenth time and the theme of their talks was "breaking down walls and building bridges."

The World March was recognized in Berlin on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 by the 10th World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The occasion was marked by a speech by Silo, founder of Universalist Humanism and an acknowledged inspiration for the March. “For the first time in history an event of this magnitude has been put in motion by the participants themselves,” he said. “The true strength of this impulse is born in the simple act of one who, out of conscience, joins a dignified cause and shares it with others." (Read full text of talk)

Brave Women of Liberia Struggle for Peace

'Pray the devil back to hell' is a documentary film that tells the story of how a group of Liberian women paved the way to make it possible for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to become the first democratically elected President in Africa in January 16, 2006. Dr. Johnson-Sirleaf made a keynote speech at a workshop on gender and infrastructure co-sponsored by the World Bank and the Government of Japan. After winning the election she talks about her vision of Liberia in Nov 2006. PBS Independent lens captures the Iron Ladies of Liberia.

She is recently barred from office for 30 years by the Truth and Reconciliation Office, she helped to set up in 2005. The role of The US government in Liberia remains unclear. CIA had reportedly used Liberia as a base to attempt the overthrow of Gadaffi's regime in Libya. The First Liberian Civil War (1989-1996), which was one of Africa's bloodiest, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and further displaced a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries.

Women ravaged by war in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda and other places are organizing to meet global food crisis, hunger and malnourishment with the help of Women For Women International.

Jimmy Carter Walks Out of his Faith Group in Support of Women's Equality

In a rare stance, ex-president (1977-1981) and Nobel Peace prize winner 2002 Jimmy Carter walks out of Southern Baptist convention in support of Women's equality and freedom in all faiths and declaration of Universal Human Rights.

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family. It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it."

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share. The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

Read Carter's significant position paper here and also comment at BPF Virtual Chapter at ning.com. Poor and vulnerable women all over the world are exploited by third largest criminal enterprise after weapons and drugs. See the East European Women Speak in this documentary.

New finds worth exploring~

Some time ago I received an invitation email from the International Museum of Women.
My first thought was it was about eminent women from the past as most museums are. I was delightfully surprised to see what a powerful and inspiring site it is profiling living and socially engaged women from all continents and backgrounds especially from areas where women's rights have a long history of suppression. It has a very proactive community action section. Listen to Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva about the power of micro-finance and peer support to change lives. Last year I joined Kiva and am delighted to see how my contribution just keeps giving on and on.

My soul friend Jamie Walter is constantly tuning into her deep feminine wisdom and recreating herself in new visionary ways. Please check out her Deep Feminine and New Edge Pioneers Portals and her cool teleclasses. Waving at you Jamie!

An American Woman's Journey as Peace Pilgrim

From 1953 to 1981 a silver haired woman calling herself only "Peace Pilgrim" walked more than 25,000 miles on a personal pilgrimage for peace. She vowed to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." In the course of her 28 year pilgrimage she touched the hearts, minds, and lives of thousands of individuals all across North America.

Her message was both simple and profound. It continues to inspire people all over the world. She had no organizational backing, carried no money, and would not even ask for food or shelter. It had to be offered without asking. For 28 years all her needs were met. She spoke to all who would listen about the entire peace picture; peace among nations, peace among groups, and the very important "inner peace" because she believed that was where peace began. Watch her speak to a college class.

Peace also requires we protect and nourish the most vulnerable, innocent and exploited girls and children subject to human trafficking around the world.

"Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called sons (and daughters) of God." - Jesus

"God became human, so humans might become God." - St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Female and Male Brain: Evolutionary Need Now

Louann Brizendine, M.D. a pioneering neuron-psychiatrist "has done a great favor to every man who are looking to find a satisfying answer to Freud’s question, ‘What does a woman want?’comments Daniel Goleman, author of 'Social intelligence".

Her book “The Female Brain” show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and whom they’ll love. Research shows an astonishing array of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal and functional brain differences between women and men. They have different brain sensitivities to stress and conflict and use different areas and circuits in brain to solve problems, process language, experience and store the same strong emotion.

• A woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man about 7,000
• A woman remember fights that a man insists never happened
• Sexual thoughts enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days, but enter a man’s brain about once every minute. [It is somewhat of a mystery why Buddha, the Awakened one was initially quite hesistant about admitting nuns in the Sangha. Perhaps to shelter and evolve male brain impulse beyond biological drives to spiritual consciousness. That's has been my sense for some years now!
• A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threaten’s bodily harm. Could it be the reason why so many relationships breakdown, because women feel men are not emotionally available to support them?
• A teen girl is obsessed with her looks and talking on phone focused intensely on her emotion and communication; as testosterone takes over male brain, teen boys grow less communicative and more focused on scoring-in games and in backseat of car.
• Male brains are larger by about 9%, women and men however have the same number of brain cells hich are just packed more densely in female- cinched into a smaller skull
• Women remember smallest details of their first date and their biggest fights, while their husbands barely remember that these things happened
• In the brain center for language and hearing women have 11% more neuron than men. Hippocampus – hub of memory and emotion formation and brain circuit for observing emotion is larger in female brain
• Men, by contrast, have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sex drive and larger circuits for action and aggression. These basic structural differences could explain perceptive differences.
• Men also have larger processors in the primitive core area of brain – amygdale, which registers fear and triggers aggression. Some men can go zero to fistfight in seconds, why many women will try anything to defuse conflict.
• Overall the female brain is gifted at quickly assessing the thoughts, beliefs and intentions of others, based on smallest hints.
• Unlike females, in the male brain most emotions trigger less gut sensation and more rational thought. The typical male brain wants to avoid emotion at all costs.
• New born girls less than a day old respond more to human faces and cry of other babies than do boys.
• Female brain has a tremendous aversion to conflict for fear of angering other person and losing relationship. She avoids anger and confrontation the same way a man avoids emotion. In case of extreme discomfort in a relationship, female brain can go into same spectrum as seizure and there are extra processing or chewing on anger happens in pre-frontal and the anterior cingulate cortex.
• Women have different emotional perceptions, realities, responses and memories than do men and these differences based on brain circuitry and function – are at the heart of many misunderstandings.
  
• There may be more mirror neurons in the human female brain than in the male brain (p 118). Mirror neuron are associated with empathy, language ability and understanding intentions of other.
• Men have about 6½ times more grey matter in the brain related to cognition and intelligence than women, while women have nearly 10 times more white matter related to cognition and intelligence than men. Grey matter processes information locally in the brain, whereas white matter networks and connects information between different centres. This grey/white matter difference is one reason men tend to excel when focusing on one task only, while women excel at integrating and assessing information from wider sources of the brain and can multitask with more ease. (Leadership & Sexes by Michael Gurian). Also see white matter matters.
  

comment: Brain is not a passive organ. It is a very active learning and adaptive mechanism. There is clearly a great need for empathy and clear communication of feelings between genders and parent-child of complementary sex; perhaps fathers allowing daughters to express anger or encouraging healthy conflicts and mothers teaching sons empathy and healthy expression of feelings and difficult emotions. . The more we are willing to understand each other and appreciate our differences the better chances we have at creating enduring and satisfying relationships.

Voices of Sacred Feminine

VOICES OF THE SACRED FEMININE
Internet Radio Show
with Karen Tate

• LISTEN LIVE EVERY WEDNESDAY
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About the Show

The Sacred Feminine, whether an archetype, ideology or deity, has been absent from the center stage of the world for centuries. In her absence, humanity has grown up like a child without it's mother. Humans are in chaos and disharmony worldwide in part because the feminine face of god has been stripped from too many of our cultures, religions and psyches.

We are like children with an emptiness in our hearts and we compensate in ways that have had tragic consequences for humankind. In this show, author, scholar and Goddess Advocate, Karen Tate, will encourage listeners to rethink, reclaim, and reawaken the Divine Feminine, She of Ten Thousand Names, personally, politically and spiritually as they hear voices redefining this resurging movement to restore the Great Mother to her throne.

Who among us isn�t tired of turning on the television or radio and hearing how fear, greed and abuse of power is sending our world spiraling out of control? Who is not ashamed to read the paper and see what passes for the norm these days? Are there others out there tired of our leaders failing us and being part of the problem as they are immersed in scandals, lies, and corruption? Where are the guideposts and benchmarks that help us steer a healthy course? Everything old is new again. Let us remember her story and vision. Her Thousand Names can be a catalyst to make positive change. Whether you embrace Goddess as deity or ideal, as archetype or metaphor, the Sacred Feminine, restored to her rightful throne, is one answer, one method, one vehicle that might change the face of the world. And we must herald her coming.....

Browse the show archive

The TAO of Evolutionary Enlightenment

Quotes From Tao Te Ching ~

• When Masculine and Feminine combine, all things achieve harmony.

• Knowing Others is Wisdom, Knowing Self is Enlightenment.

• Knowing ignorance is strength, ignoring knowledge is sickness; the sage is not sick, because he is sick of sickness; as such he is not sick.

• In the pursuit of learning, everyday something is acquired, In the pursuit of Tao, something is dropped

The softest thing in the universe, overcomes the hardest thing in the universe
That without substance can enter where there is no room
Hence the sage knows the value of non-action.

Man follows the earth,
Earth follows heaven,
Heaven follows the Tao
Tao follows what is natural

The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead,
He is detached, thus at one with all
Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.
Because he does not compete
He does not meet competition

The highest good is like water
Water does not strive
It gives life to ten thousand things
It flows in places men reject
So it is like the Tao

SHE ALONE DOES NOT COMPETE, AND SO THE WORLD CAN NEVER OVERCOME HER - Lao Tzu
Most quotes come from Tao Te Ching, Translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English

Confession of a Bodhisattva: Difficult Birth of Divine Masculine

My friend Jamie sent me an interesting blog which I can very much relate to from my own real encounter with boomeritic bodhisattvas of both gender. Ken Wilber describes 'boomeritis' as a strange mixture of very high cognitive capacity of the green meme and its eagalitarianism and noble pluralism, infected with rather low state of emotional narcisissm and ego-centric reactivism regressing to pre-conventional narcissistic attitudes that go against anything integral or even universal.

Reactivism and resistance in any form overt or subtle arises due to exposure to repeated hurts and unmet emotional needs, actual and perceived in relationships from opposites sex parent/teacher, siblings/friends or partner/boss and our inability to stay with, voice, accept, recognize and reconcile this pain welling from within.

The old ways of fight or flight to cope with perceived or real physical danger fails miserably in case of emotional pain and alienation. Material success and social image do not compensate for the pervasive sense of alienation, lack of intimacy and human warmth that conscious men and women are feeling deep inside their hearts now.

As Deepak Chopra in The Book of Secrets comments:

"If it weren't for the enormous effort we put into denial, repression, and doubt, life would be a constant revealation. It takes a thousand of choices to keep the book of secrets closed, but it only takes a single breakthrough to open it again. The locked door is inside you, and so is the key."

"The Divine Feminine voice in me said she was waiting for five little boys to grow up (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism). She needs -literally- to make love in this world, to give birth to a new way for the planet to exist. She has been holding her love and attention over this planet for thousands of years, watching as five little boys have had their way with a World they are not mature enough to steward. She is waiting to usher in a future, but she can't do it alone, and she won't have a partner until the five little boys grow up. Humanity's survival depends on it.

Not the survival of the religions, or faith, or god, or even the planet. People. If people are going to keep living, if we have hope of being around in 1,000 or 10,000 years from now, we will have grow into a full, mature balance with the feminine -at every level of ourselves.

....I had a very distorted perspective of love, family, relationship, and spirituality. I was a dissociated Zen Practitioner. My idea of practice was climbing into my Buddhist Tree Fort in the clouds and removing myself from the mess of reality, family, relationships. My wife is the only one who's ever been able to get me out of that tree fort in the sky." - Qouted from musician Stuart Davis's blog

Five other human endeavors suffering from boomeritis are the fields of Science & Technology; Art & Architecture, Economics & Politics; Ecology and Environment; and New Age Spirituality. Science and technology of course impacts medicine, health, education and psychology (See Spiral Dynamics of memes).

"Love is the most universal, the most tremendous, the most mysterious of the cosmic forces. Is it truly possible for humanity to continue to live and grow without asking itself how much truth and energy it is losing by neglecting its incredible powers of love?" -

Pierre. Teilhard de Chardin, The Spirit of the Earth,1931

"Fearlessness is the most prominent characteristic of all bodhisattvas and all who tread the bodhisattva path. For them, life has lost its terrors and suffering its sting. Instead of scorning earthly existence, or condemning its 'imperfection', they fill it with a new meaning." -Lama Anagorika Govinda, A Living Buddhism for the West