Feminism - Change we can believe in?

“Change we can believe in” is a slogan we have seen often these last few months. But I wonder if we as a people and a society are really committed to change. Reading about the growing communal tension in India, the unabated abuse and destruction of the environment for personal and economic gain, the flexing of political muscle in so many countries around the world, the aggressive and relentless arms race and the collapse of financial structures and entities across continents brings me to the point where we as a people need “to be the change that we wish to see in the world.” Is it not time now for a whole new world order, a new world view where power, control, order, domination, patriarchy, war, aggression give way to empowerment, equality, humanity and dignity of all living things? Or are we content to languish and wallow in “more of the same?”

The book, “Fire in these Ashes” by Joan Chittister has been an all time favourite of mine. In the chapter ‘New Perspective, Necessary Virtue’ she says, “Feminism is a worldview that revisions the world from the perspectives of the equality, humanity and dignity of every living thing.

Feminism is actually a very simple concept. Feminism is a commitment to the equality, the dignity and full humanity of all human beings to such an extent that we dedicate ourselves to effecting the changes in structures and relationships that make the fullness of humanity possible for everyone. On the other hand, straightforward as it is, it requires a whole new way of seeing the world and everything in it. Feminism views the world from the point of view of the meaning of creation rather than the concentration of power. To the feminist whatever has been created is good and gifted and necessary to the development of the human race, to be respected, to be listened to, to be included in the panoply of power that affects its existence. To the feminist, nothing is made for the "comfort and necessity" of something else, nothing is without its own dignity, its own meaning, its own value, its own needs, its own gifts, its own rights. To the feminist, life is not a matter of the survival of the fittest, it is a matter of the fullest possible development of us all.

What feminism seeks is true partnership for the care of the earth, true balance of its gifts, true integrity in its rela­tionships. Without it we can never mend a universe distorted by force, given over to power, built on oppression and made the captive of might.

Feminist spirituality calls for a new kind of spirituality in all of us. The rational, the ritualistic, the repressive spirituality of patriarchy that divides the world and everything in it into good and bad, high and low, living and non-living, agent and object must give way now to a spirituality that, integrated, sees God in everything, inspiriting, recognizes the Spirit in every­thing, inclusive, sees equal value in everyone, humble, sees no one and nothing as more or less acceptable to God, and incarnational, sees God and God's grace present everywhere in everything. Feminist spirituality is indeed dangerous for the orthodoxies that categorize and control. It demands a new ecology of life, not simply a reform of what is. It is the hope of the earth, the liberation of the oppressed, the eman­cipation of imagination, the very restoration of the real mean­ing of God.”

Imagine! Believe! Become the change!