Ann: Hello Miriam, do I hear you knocking at the door?
Miriam: Yes, indeed. I stopped by for a chat as we women do - as we two did many a time in generations gone by. It is good to have that venue open again. Women have a special bond.
Ann: No doubt about it. Was that what you wanted to talk about?
Miriam: Yes, and the fact that everyone has been a woman, everyone has been a man. Never could figure out if karma thought that was a punishment, a reward, or maybe a bad joke but God herself probably had something to do with it.
Ann: Is God a woman?
Miriam: You know better than that. Man and woman are just constructs, two sides of the same stone, both a series of hoops we all have to jump through before we can leapfrog off this planet onto another dimension.
And that is what I wanted to talk to you about. These roles that are assigned to man and woman really don’t amount to a hill of beans because they are set up to demonstrate the futility of dominance one over the other - although it may not seem that way at first.
Everyone starts out thinking if would be better to be the man, dominant one, since that looks like the most fun. Just let the little woman wait on you hand and foot, offer her body when requested, and then bow out silently when her services are no longer needed. But sooner or later it gets to be lonely all alone on the top of that mountain so the master tries to lift the slave up just a bit – not so much that he might lose control – but just enough so that he has someone to talk to, to admire him, to tend to him, and to reflect back his own opinions.
And that, oddly enough he doesn’t find that very satisfactory either. So karma kicks in, and he may take the woman’s role the next time (or two) around - not in penance but to broaden his understanding of what he is seeking. Finally, eventually, every soul will come to realize that only a communion of equals is worth the battle, and that is what the Creator has brought us here to learn.
Coming to this understanding is not easy even when a soul has many experiences of both roles. Sometimes the woman turned man is determined to take all she was previously denied, sometimes the man turned woman is resentful and rebels at the path he is asked to tread. Struggle as we may, the connection of soul to soul in harmony and love eventually submerges any illusion of dominance or submission. Mr. Rogers said it all: there is no hierarchy in souls.
So now what we have to do is to look into the eyes of each person we meet and seek that connection, knowing with the wisdom of experience that we have been all things to all people and that we are not proud of some of the ways we have handled those experiences.
This is when we start God’s work. We seek out the other for a communion of equals, a community of souls resting in the hands of a Creator who founded male and female energy as part of the conflagration of creation, one to another, each to each, and all together in an infinite spiral where none is the same but somehow incomplete without the other.
Then the wonder of this magnificent and evolving creation dawns, and we begin to take the journey that we were born for, from solitude and self-obsession to compassion and love from one to the other. Then the weak are lifted up by the strong, and the strong are carried further by those whose frailty disappears in the circle of the Divine.
Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is both sturdy and frail, dirty and clean, and each belongs in the tent together. Reach out your hands to your fellow tent mates, and you will see yourself. Just witness our reunion here today, and consider continuing this conversation with Jehanne, known now as Joan of Arc who has much to offer us from her experiences.
April 22, 2020
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