January 6, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Forming a Woman's Council
By Stephanie Hiller
One day in the fall of 1996 or thereabouts, I was sitting in the sun at the back of my farmhouse in Occidental which stood overlooking Green Valley and facing lovely Mt. St. Helena. It was a warm lovely day, I was dressed accordingly, and as I soaked up the sunshine I had an inspiration.
It had to do with women gathering in groups, and it came in the form of a Woman's Club. There would be woman's clubs in many towns and cities, organized for whatever purpose -- book clubs, support groups, knitting circles, what you will -- and they would network with one another, coming together perhaps once a year as a sort of Convention of Woman's Clubs. And perhaps from that, a woman's movement would be born.
Turns out that around that time Jean Shinoda Bolen was having similar thoughts. A published author, her thoughts gave rise to a little book called The Millionth Circle which envisioned that the growth of women's circles would continue exponentially until a tipping point was reached, when gathering in circle would be the new paradigm for our culture "and it would change the world."
Ideas seem to be self-existent somewhere in a purely mental plane of being. Like the secret texts said to be hidden by the dakinis, they reveal themselves when the time is right. Somehow they are transmitted to us or picked by up us when we are open to revelation. They do not belong to us, they simply come through. My women's clubs and Bolen's millionth circle are versions of a single idea -- the spread and interaction of local women's groups where women feel empowered to speak their truths. Alice Walker has spoken widely of the Iroquois model of governance, where a woman's council of elder women holds the final authority for the tribe. Chiefs cannot be appointed without their approval, nor war declared. Walker has called for councils of thirteen grandmothers. She has a council of her own.
I have been a member of many circles, mostly for the practice of ritual. But I too am impressed with the Iroquois model of governance. It allows women to be women, and men to be men, but it assures that men's tendency to become inflated with power will be held in check. After 9-11, I felt a growing need to be part of such a group, and as a crone I felt qualified. We elder women, freed of the impulse to reproduce (and all that goes with that), no longer feel so compelled to modify our behavior for the sake of pleasing men. We do have a sort of wisdom, proportional to our aspiration to interpret our experience consciously, and we have a powerful impulse to make the world a better place before we leave it. Bolen has written about this phenomenon in another book, Goddesses in Older Women, and speaks frequently on this topic as well. Feminists especially of the pagan variety have restored the older woman to a position of greater honor, certainly, than that afforded us in this youth-worshiping culture which actually derides and denigrates women who have lost their appeal to men, who never seem to reach a point of disengagement from their desires. Rituals celebrating the woman who has ceased to bleed are now becoming common amongst lovers of the goddess; and with our longer lifetimes now, women remain active well into their 70s. As much as we are embarking on what must be called the Age of the Woman, we are also entering into a time of respect for the wisdom of aging.
Last April my cohort in this publication, Sarada, agreed with me that it was time to call a council. Several women were interested, and a small group formed. Confronted with the deafening roar of our now blatantly militaristic society, we did not know where to begin. But we met and talked about world affairs, defined our mission as that of becoming a forum through which women's voices might be heard, and called ourselves the Woman's Council of Sonoma County (where we reside) hoping to eventually represent our own community and achieve recognition amongst local organizations and government agencies. Whenever possible, we met in sacred space, invoking the goddess to guide us in our work.
One day Sarada had read in the paper that surplus dry milk powder was going to waste in government warehouses, a tragic loss considering that pregnant and nursing women in Afghanistan (to name one country out of many) were so starved themselves that they could not properly feed their young. We decided to explore the idea of sending that milk to Afghanistan. Later, aware that there is a drought in that poor country, we looked into sending wheat instead.
We hadn't given up the idea, though it turns out to be cumbersome, fraught with bureaucratic complexities and expensive to ship, and with a war looming in that part of the world, we weren't sure it was practical. But we decided to contact Patricia Smith Melton about our idea, knowing that she was then on her way to Kabul to film a documentary. (Please see our story about her project in this issue for more information.) She agreed to take a letter from us to see if food could be transferred to needy women in a project we tentatively called Women to Women, bypassing the authorities who have been known to dump such shipments or sell them to someone else (as Iraq has been known to do).
On her return from her trip, Patricia told us that the women in Kabul did not seem to want shipments of food, that they had projects of their own and needed support to carry them out. By then she had conceived the Global Network linking women's circles here with circles abroad, and she offered to connect us with the woman's circle in Kabul.
And that is what happened. The Global Network encourages women to communicate, to get to know each other personally and directly, and engage in whatever shared activities they may choose.
We are now involved in that process. Patricia has sent us photos. Our group has begun to return our e-mails and a fledgling communication has begun. We have a source for free textbooks and will work on sending those. We also plan a fundraiser so that we can send money to our sister circle.
We continue to meet and air our concerns about the world while moving forward with the practical work of making a contribution to the women of Kabul.
Through the Global Network we will eventually be linked to all the other circles. And through our own networks, including Awakened Woman, we would like to spread the idea of women sitting in council to help the world. We invite you to form a council and to let us know if you do. Although we do not yet have a database for linking up, we have always had the vision of providing that service at this web site. It is one of the many developments that await the support of the angel investors we hope will come.
If you have a council, or if you form one, please share your news with us. We will post it on this page. Councils, like circles or clubs, may be formed for any purpose. They need not be circles of crones. But it is important that these organizations be places where women can speak together without the involvement of men. Men certainly have enough councils of their own, from which we have long been excluded; and it is important for men who choose to meet in a sacred environment to also have the opportunity to meet without us. We do not think of this separation as "sexist" but rather as an evolutionary way to discover our own powers and interests, so that one day in the not so distant future women and men will meet as equals, honored and respected for the unique contributions they make to "civil society".
That's the way the Iroquois do it, and as you may know, the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy inspired our own. By looking to our senior residents on this Continent, we may yet discover how to "become indigenous" ourselves.
That would certainly be a cure for the present state of our society, where isolation and alienation from the common welfare are still the predominant condition.