Hi!
It's been a while, but I wrote something over at my friend Adriel's blog!
Adriel has been doing a very cool month-long series on empowering women through so many different avenues. She invited me to write about a few of my favorite topics: The Beauty Myth ala Naomi Wolf, the Liberian Women's Peace Movement ala Leymah Gbowee, the power of non-violence and how our own liberation from the myth frees us to 'pray the devil back to hell.'
Here's an excerpt:
"Advertisers want our money but there are spiritual forces at work that desperately want our female power to be wasted. You know why? Because so much can happen when women gather and call for change.
My history education growing up in an American public school was largely based around how violence brings change; the heroes we learned about were those who won the wars they fought (and then wrote the history from their perspective, of course). Rarely was a non-violent movement given much time in our classroom until we hit the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s and Martin Luther King Jr’s leadership (and a brief shout out to Rosa Parks). Otherwise, it was all about war. My imagination was never given a chance to grow and I’m pretty sure it’s stunted. (Fortunately there is hope for my kids!)
When my husband was still a boy I had never met he spent a few weeks in Liberia, in 2004. He was doing some recording in a local dialect for a project and had little knowledge of the history that was in the making. He knew that civil war ended the year before, he saw the bullet ridden buildings and spent time with a man who lost his wife to violence, but it otherwise seemed very … peaceful. Shortly after we were married he bought a documentary called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” on the Liberian Woman’s Peace Movement, which was the major player in ending the fourteen-year conflict. We watched it together and everything changed for me. I’ve seen it over a dozen times now and every time I hear these women speak I learn something new and I’m challenged by how I spend my own time, money and energy."
Read the rest over at Adriel's blog where we'd always love to hear YOUR thoughts!
It's been a while, but I wrote something over at my friend Adriel's blog!
Adriel has been doing a very cool month-long series on empowering women through so many different avenues. She invited me to write about a few of my favorite topics: The Beauty Myth ala Naomi Wolf, the Liberian Women's Peace Movement ala Leymah Gbowee, the power of non-violence and how our own liberation from the myth frees us to 'pray the devil back to hell.'
Here's an excerpt:
"Advertisers want our money but there are spiritual forces at work that desperately want our female power to be wasted. You know why? Because so much can happen when women gather and call for change.
My history education growing up in an American public school was largely based around how violence brings change; the heroes we learned about were those who won the wars they fought (and then wrote the history from their perspective, of course). Rarely was a non-violent movement given much time in our classroom until we hit the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s and Martin Luther King Jr’s leadership (and a brief shout out to Rosa Parks). Otherwise, it was all about war. My imagination was never given a chance to grow and I’m pretty sure it’s stunted. (Fortunately there is hope for my kids!)
When my husband was still a boy I had never met he spent a few weeks in Liberia, in 2004. He was doing some recording in a local dialect for a project and had little knowledge of the history that was in the making. He knew that civil war ended the year before, he saw the bullet ridden buildings and spent time with a man who lost his wife to violence, but it otherwise seemed very … peaceful. Shortly after we were married he bought a documentary called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” on the Liberian Woman’s Peace Movement, which was the major player in ending the fourteen-year conflict. We watched it together and everything changed for me. I’ve seen it over a dozen times now and every time I hear these women speak I learn something new and I’m challenged by how I spend my own time, money and energy."
Read the rest over at Adriel's blog where we'd always love to hear YOUR thoughts!
 |
| Leymah Gbowee |
0 comments:
Post a Comment