Revolutionize and Mutualize People Power
... Our Spring 2011 Theme ...
Our W&R work is in the flow of the worldwide coming together for interdependence and freedom. The human evolution of our going to this partnership level of empowerment makes our W&R movement ever strong.
SW UU Women's Conference
SouthWest UU Women held their 25th annual Conference, "Generation NEXXT" in Dallas Texas on March 3-5. Despite their keynote speaker having to cancel at the last minute due to family illness, the SWUUW women were up to the challenge. Participants commented:
"Big Bad Gina ROCKED! It was so fun to dance to their music, and just be entertained by them!"
"I thought Intern Rev. Megan [Dalby-Jones] did a very good job of delivering the message that Rev. Tambra Lebak was to have given."
Shirin Neshat, Iranian Film Director
Islamic women are powerful ladies drawing on powerful mythological sources. My favorite is Shirin Neshat (1957-), from Iran. I just watched a film directed by her, Women without Men, which is available through Netflix. The surrealistic film is based on a surrealistic novella by Shahrnush Parsipur (translation available from Syracuse University Press, 1998)
Neshat’s story is about four women living in 1953 when a coup ousted the President Mohammed Mosaddeq in favor of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. (In case you haven’t heard of Mosaddeq, and I had to look him up, he was an elected leader in Iran, who the CIA and the British intelligence deposed, putting in the Shah of Iran with his repressive reign. And that is only one of the reasons the people in the Middle East are angry at the U.S. and Britain.)
One woman is a communist; one is a prostitute; one an older women who had been a singer, but her husband didn’t allow her to sing; and the last is a woman who is concerned about the importance of virginity.
Response to Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, Isis
Making connections is so important. Women weaving the web of life remind us to connect the difficult past with present struggles and give birth to hope in a more peaceful and just future.
Back in the early 1980s, I remember questioning the traditional mythology presented at my son’s Waldorf school, mythology that told of war as inevitable. Weren’t there any powerful, responsible women who might come up with better solutions to conflict, if they weren’t depicted as eternally weak and shallow? Where were the stories of wise women and men making peace, protecting the web of relationships and life? I was just beginning to learn about goddesses and alternative gender relationships in very early times, so I knew there was more to the story. Maybe changing the belief that war would always exist needed to precede the end of war.
"Cakes..." Author Responds
Yes! Distinguished scholars tell us we humans may have an ancient heritage of partnership and peace. My hope is that the current uprisings mean that people everywhere are beginning the process of reclaiming that heritage. Surely we have all had enough of domination and war. -- Shirley Ranck, author Cakes for the Queen of Heaven
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Reproductive Justice
If you have any questions, please contact UU Women and Religion, info@uuwr.org.
Main resources from the UUA: www.uua.org/reproductive
