Mother’s Day: Encouraging Women’s Voices
After celebrating a great Mother’s Day this weekend, I find myself thinking about mothers and their role in the Greater Good.
It is worth noting that I am still a card-carrying feminist who remembers the days of no birth control, no credit cards, no corner office. For that reason, I notice when news commentators, though often women, rarely interview women about politics or foreign policy. I notice that boards of regents at graduation ceremonies and boards of directors of public companies are still mostly men. I notice how testosterone-induced terminology and ideas still dominate international interactions.
Surely, I am not alone in that. Surely, around the world, other women realize that the same wisdom that raised our sons and daughters to be amazing, thoughtful people is wisdom that can raise the world to a new standard. Surely, like me, women in Palestine and Korea and Africa grieve for the lives being lost in violent conflicts started by men. Surely, they dream of a summit of female perspectives. More than that, with Hiliary Clinton running for U.S. President, you would think there would be a new sense of possibility among at least American women.
Sadly, evidence of all that is scarce. There has yet to be a forceful outcry at the U.N. by women demanding that reconciliation not retaliation be used to solve global problems. There has yet to be a massive digital meet-up of female visionaries encouraging each other to speak peace to power. There has not even been overwhelming support for Hiliary Clinton by women here in America (although, we’ll save the details of that discussion for another day.)
The point for now is that for decades of Mother’s Days we, women, have done no less than stand by and let angry men turn the world into a school playground of boys with balled-up fists.
As mothers, as sisters, as daughters, as wives, as friends, it is time for us to care enough about each other– and those fathers and brothers and husbands who need us– to say out loud what we know in our hearts:
The Greater Good is best served when courageous, compassionate women (and men) use their creative problem-solving ideas in collaborative ways to bring about the vision of a world community.
That, my friend, is InSpiritry at its best.
Happy Mother’s Day to All of Us!
