“I came to acce…

“I came to accept that I have no right whatsoever to judge others in terms of my own customs.”

-Nelson Mandela, unpublished autobiographical manuscript, 1975

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Multidimensional Connections

Yesterday morning, we had our “official” (scheduled) weekly check in. We’re all busy, but I check in almost every day with each of the women of the Womb – over morning coffee/tea, breakfast, lunch, brief crash/rest moments on the couch or late night studying in the kitchen. Still, I treasure our Sunday meetings. In the midst of our busy schedules it’s nice to have at least one full-group meeting each week.

At the beginning of the semester, each of the five of us identified a book we’d like to share with one another and this week, Lauren’s pick In the Image by Dara Horn was up for discussion. As usual, our time together was powerful and our reflections covered multiple topics. It might not be a surprise that in our space in the Womb, interconnection was one of the key themes I picked up on as I read the book. The book weaves narratives of characters from multiple generations, so in addition to talking about connections among and with people who are our contemporaries, it emphasizes the roles experiences of generations past have in shaping our present experiences. Further, it explores cultural and social connections.

In the Womb, any number of these themes come up as regular topics of conversation. We often discuss our our identities as women, people of faith and students. We talk about our passions for justice. We talk about our families and our ancestors – the way they shaped us and our journeys. We talk about our nationalities and more. I’m ever grateful for the opportunities this home of ours provides for exploring similarities and differences. Through it all, we are deepening our connections with each other and our expanding circles!

Here’s a quote from the book that resonated (not without a supplementary link to express recognition of at least some of what’s problematic about the diamond industry, though):

“Diamonds are pure carbon, pieces of coal, more or less, buried beneath hundreds of miles of molten rock, emerging one billion to three billion years later as shining stars, like hardened fire. The carbon that forms them comes from the earth’s mantle, the layer of molten matter that forms the bulk of the planet. But some diamonds come from organic matter forced into the mantle…Others come from meteorites, carbon remnants of the corpses of distant stars. Which is a long and complicated way of saying that, despite all the conquests across the surface of the earth, nothing is really lost.”

Song Circles

In addition to the Residency Program, one of the most powerful, grounding, filling, meaningful aspects of my semester has been a weekly women’s song circle. We try to gather once each week for about an hour in a small chapel on campus.

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I’m not the best singer in the world; still, I have fond memories of song groups. When I was in elementary school, my home church had “Choir Club” each week for several years. We’d walk to the church from school, have snacks and then spend some time singing songs. In late-elementary or middle school, our music teacher formed a group that gathered before school and sang. Singing was an important part of summer camp. I was in spirit-filling gospel choir in college. We danced to music last week when my cousin got married, and it might not have been a true Tinker gathering if the guitar didn’t come out one night for singing of folk songs in the living room of the B&B. The list goes on…

I’m not the best singer in the world, but Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” can bring needed tears on a heartache day; India.Arie’s “I Am Light” is a new mantra; hearing Pachelbel’s Canon at the doctor’s office calms my heart; “I Feel Lucky” by Mary Chapin Carpenter takes me back to that determination to beat cancer; Ruthie Foster’s version of “Woke up this Morning” makes me want to march; listening to Sister Rosetta Tharpe sing “Down by the Riverside” brought me a little bit of joy that morning when we were with Grandma as she took her last breath; and forevermore, John Lennon’s “Imagine” will take me back to that night during Ramadan when we sat with Bu Syafa on the stage at Cak Nun’s home outside of Jogja. Kristen had the lead mic, the gamelon band took the instrumentals; and there, together with the hundreds of Muslim brothers and sisters sitting in the crowd, we were dreaming aloud for a better world.

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About once a week, we join together. Four or five of us (give or take). We check in with each other. And we sing. We bring songs that are on our hearts, or tunes that we’ve been humming. Usually they don’t involve many words, just simple melodies that we can repeat over and over, play with, go deep with. Sometimes, we really let go and we sing ourselves into something that is beautifully and powerfully beyond any desire I have to comprehend.

We have the benefit of a few really strong singers, a sense of solidarity, a plethora of emotional joys and struggles. We’re embarking on big journeys, lost in new beginnings, finding our way, hurting and happy, sure and unsure, heartbroken and in love…And, together, we create a space for holding and honoring those things and putting little bits of ourselves into the music coming from our mouths and hearts.

If you get the chance, I’d recommend it. It takes a little bit of crazy, a lot of humility, a pinch of healthy vulnerability, and a willingness (maybe even a need) to empty…to just let go. A simple recipe for a powerfully simple and simply powerful experience. I’ll try to remember to add links to a couple of songs that might be good starting places.

Women’s Night – Happiness

Just over two weeks ago, the Interfaith Women’s Residency Program hosted the first of several Women’s Nights of the semester. When we initially planned for the event, we decided to subtitle it “radical women’s self care.” I’ve been thinking about it in those terms ever since, though nothing about the evening (or us!) seemed particularly radical in the conventional sense of the term.

The five of us welcomed about eight women over the course of the evening. We prepared snacks and our friend Kristen brought desserts; Ayesha lit the candles. We had a relatively unstructured evening of discussion, laughter and getting-to-know one another. Aside from a couple of discussion prompts, conversation flowed freely as friends from each of our lives came to know one another. It was lovely. A Saturday night in. Songs of laughter; dancing in the form of introductory hugs, handshakes and shuffling chairs as more women joined the circle; decadence of desserts and simple snacks; entertainment of stories shared.

Sometimes, simply pausing in the midst of it all can seem like a radical act.

(Also, random fact: if you Google search ‘defied,’ the first example for the definition of defy (“openly resist or refuse to obey”) is “a woman who defies convention.”)

You Go Girl!

Maya Anglou has a poem called “Phenomenal Woman.” This post is all about celebrating phenomenal women – so you might want to start out by listening to Maya Angelo recite the poem or by listening to Ruthie Foster, one of my favorite musical artists, sing her adaptation of Phenomenal Woman.

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This May, I attended a Feminst.com fundraiser featuring a program and audience of absolutely fabulous women! Marianne Williamson was the keynote speaker, Sister Joan Chittister received the Spirit, Faith and Action Award, India Arie serenaded us with song, Union professor Chung Hyun Kyung was on a multi-faith panel of eight women. It was an incredible evening. So many things stand out. This week, Marianne Williamson’s insistence that, as women, we must hold one another, encourage each other, and celebrate each other’s victories stands out the most. “You go girl” was echoed throughout the night as women spoke, sang, conversed.

Each month, we meet with members of the Advisory Council for the program. This week, we talked about the competition that is imposed on women in our patriarchal world. We talked about our own experiences with competition between women – in the workplace, school, etc. We also talked about the way our own intentional community and other all-women spaces can be spaces where women-identified people have some sanctuary from that competition. And we talked about the light that shines in our world when that that competition is replaced with affirmation and solidarity.

I’ve been feeling sanctuary in our emerging home. I mean sanctuary as a refuge from the beautiful, busy (and sometimes crazy and painful) world around us and (connected) as a sacred space, which prepares me and supports me as I navigate the tides of the world. We hold each other – we are baskets for various emotions (righteous anger included); we lift each other up – with encouragement at the beginning of stressful days and with celebration upon the completion; we sustain one another – through knowledge-sharing, laughter, simple check-ins, and food. In other words, “You go girl” is all over the place (most often figuratively, and sometimes literally). And I’m finding it makes a difference here and beyond the walls of our residence at Union Seminary.

Celebrate a woman you love today – let her know just how phenomenal she is!!