Faithful Doubter

The only God I know
is love.
The only prayer
for me.
Is that this simple thought
should spread,
through all humanity.
The only time we have
is now.
Now is the time
to see.
This linking love
in everyone
as our divinity.
But life is life
and love is love
and sense inside of me,
cannot equate
the fanciful
with harsh reality.

       Michael Skelding, Comment on "The Pathway Finally Opened," by Mahsati Ganjavi

Poetry Chaikhana Blog » Blog Archive » Mahsati Ganjavi – The Pathway Finally Opened

It almost appears as if the writer of the last sentence had not read the first three.

If the apparently real is apparently hopeless,
but the apparent fantastic is boundlessly free,
may i excuse myself for trying to make
fantasy real and reality  bygone history?

"It’s not that I thought I had any particular issues with gender wounding (ha!). After all, I grew up in the counter-culture, the daughter of feminist parents who taught me that I could do anything I could dream of (and I have). But it did not take me long to recognize all the ways in which I had been subjected to the cultural imbalance between the masculine and the feminine, and had been unconsciously complicit in contributing to my own suffering and to that of the men in my life. It was a potent awakening. But much more significant than my recognition that this issue is an issue for me after all was the realization that all the religions of the world, which I am so passionately involved in writing, speaking, and teaching about, have this shadow of gender imbalance at their core. All my efforts to point out the common message of love at the heart of all faiths are futile until I acknowledge this and deal with it. That journey began last weekend. What made it even more relevant for me was the fact that the gender work Will and Cynthia do is grounded in an interspiritual approach, weaving in prayers, practices and celebrations from many spiritual streams. It’s quite revolutionary. I urge you to experience it for yourself."

mirabaistarr « Mirabai Starr, author and speaker

Mirabai Starr's most recent blog focuses on "Inter spirituality" (transcultural spiritualities) which is interesting and heartwarming, but the occasion for this coming together was "gender reconciliation."  Just as people who would have happy with the way things were 200 years ago in race relations and other forms of oppressive inequality want to think we have settled these issues; so now everybody wants to shout, "You've come a long way, baby, now won't you please shut up."  Well, every distance is short or long depending on how you want to look at it.  Mirabai Starr wants to look at it in terms of where we should be, rather than in terms of where we were.  I'm with her.