Women Walking In Wisdom’s Footsteps™

We've had a few posts here devoted to women:

There was Mass Murder of Women,
Abused and Tortured Women - Mass Murder #2, and Women: From Bad to Better . . .

So, today, I'm going to direct your attention to a woman's blog that's "For women who are humble enough to seek wisdom yet sensible enough to impart it."

It's called: Women Walking In Wisdom’s Footsteps™ and, since it offers to share wisdom from women, I want to, especially, invite men to take a look!

Men? Hell yes!!! I'm a man and I grew up being told that the best philosophers were men. Then, I attained an age to begin to know better. Wisdom is the name of the Goddess Sophia and if you Love her (philo) you are into Philosophy (the Love of Wisdom).

Women Walking In Wisdom's Footsteps™ is ripe and replete with Sophia's Love...

Here's that blogger's profile:

About KWiz

Dec 6th, 2006 by KWiz

What’s with this eye?

I am the wife of a wonderfully caring man, the mother of a fabulous 2-year old “big girl”, and a teacher of Biblical Studies at a private, college prep high school in Georgia who is seeking to live out her calling as a Woman Walking In Wisdom’s Footsteps.

I’ve been married since April 14, 2001 to a great writer, photographer, speaker, poet, and all-around fix-it man. He also happens to be a great father. I’ve experienced alot of growth as a result of this relationship, but it hasn’t been easy. You’ll read about some of the growing pains I’ve experienced and the many resources God has sent my way to help me grow.

I’ve been a mother since May 20, 2004. My pregnancy was divinely-ordered, and out of it came the most beautiful baby girl you’d ever want to see (of course, every mother says this about their new babies!). I struggled during most of my pregnancy, and almost lost her. I’ll tell you a bit more about these struggles and what I learned from them, hopefully providing some encouragement for those “older” women (35+) who are discouraged because of their age.

I am also a teacher of biblical studies at a Christian college-prep high school in Georgia. God orchestrated this as well, as I was blessed with this position right after I completed my Master of Divinity degree at Emory University. I enjoy studying and teaching both Old Testament and New Testament from an academic point of view; it doesn’t negate faith at all, but it does open up the scriptures in a way that adds so much richness to one’s faith, if they allow it. I’ve been teaching on an academic level for seven years now - it is my calling, and I’m so thankful that I was open to receiving what God had for me. I’ll be speaking a bit about calling and how you can go about discovering yours.

These are a few of my many experiences that I hope will enlighten and encourage you as we seek to gain and share wisdom together.

Abused and Tortured Women - Mass Murder #2

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This post exists because of a response to the post just before it.

Ihoha, who's blog carried the story I covered in the last post, made a brilliant comment on it.

The comment's right there under the post but I felt it deserved being a post in it's own right.

You may want to back up and read that last post first...

~~~~~~~~~

My Dear Alexander,

Thank you for posting this information in your blog. It is horrifying to know that this kind of behavior continues as we move on in this new millenium. However, this may be one evidence that we have not gone far at all in our hearts and minds as a species. As we think we are the only thinking and feeling beings, those that believe that we are made -- in whose image are we so made that we kill those that bring life into the world?

I have often wondered if we truly believe any of our scriptures or are we simply carrying books out of some force of habit?

May the men of the world truly let go of fear and trust in life and love. How can love not be known to and by them? Women give birth to male children and care for them until they are able to care for themselves. That is an example and position of power.

We are okay -- male and female -- and though the power of the female lies in the time even before birth, there is a power that she does not control during the hosting process and that is the structuring of the being into human. This knowledge and power is beyond her reach. A woman is never closer to death than at the point of birth. Men will never know the pain of it nor the shift in consciousness required to accept something separate from yourself growing inside your very body.

As a female and a mother, I offer this: power lies in knowing who and what you are and that no part of you is missing.

Loving Blessings,
Ihoha Sophia

Mass Murder of Women

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I'm bringing a horrible story to this blog today...

A story about how "Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust."

A story I first saw in the excellent blog, Would Your Mother Be Ashamed?, then followed into The Christian Science Monitor.

Here are some of the facts:

• "In countries where the birth of a boy is preferred, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.

• "Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to males.

• "In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners.

• "The brutal international sex trade kills uncounted numbers of girls.

• "Domestic violence is a major reason for the deaths of women in every country.

• "Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die, and others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain."

This sickens me. It's been going on for millennia and it's intolerable!

There have been many efforts to get at the roots of the problem and explore methods to eliminate this pernicious "gendercide". One of the best I've found was: A summary report of a Symposium on Strategies for Creating Violence-Free Families, initiated by the Bahá'í International Community and co-sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

In that document, it's said:

"The links between violence in the family and social, structural and political violence are inescapable."

Feeling helpless about social injustice brings me to my best human refuge and first means of defense against hopelessness--Prayer...

A Journalist In Darfur

This is Awatif Ahmed Isshag.

She's been a journalist for the last ten years.

She lives in Darfur.

When events like the ongoing crisis in Darfur come to the attention of relatively secure people like me (resident of the USA, not starving, and not seeing death and destruction every day), we feel particularly helpless.

It's going to take more than the combined efforts of all the aid organizations there are to help people in that country [not to mention the horrible happenings in other countries].

It's going to take a massive change of heart--massive change for each individual who could help in any way and massive change for every government and political person who has any influence on secular happenings--a thorough spiritual transformation.

Can you hear it?

The world is crying, screaming for change...

The Dynamist Blog carried a short article about Awatif Ahmed Isshag. Here's just a taste:

"Nearly a decade ago, at 14, Isshag started publishing a handwritten community newsletter about local events, arts and religion. Once a month she'd paste decorated pages to a large piece of wood and hang it from a tree outside her family's home for passersby to read.

"Her grass-roots periodical has become the closest thing that El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, has to a hometown newspaper. More than 100 people a day stop to check out her latest installments, some walking several miles from nearby displacement camps....

"Isshag complained that despite international attention, the suffering of Darfur remained vastly underreported inside Sudan. There are no television stations in the area, and most newspapers operate under government control or are based hundreds of miles away in Khartoum.

"'The local media don't cover the issue of Darfur,' she said. 'We hear about it when one child dies in Iraq, but we hear nothing when 50 children die' in Darfur."

She is, in a way, blogging without a computer.

If you need some background on the bigger picture, the BBC News has Q&A: Sudan's Darfur conflict and Wikipedia has Darfur Conflict.


A more complete story on Awatif Ahmed Isshag can be had at the Los Angeles Times. Here's a telling detail from that article:

"An advocate for women's education, Isshag credits her parents for allowing her to avoid being tied down by housework and pursue her interest in writing.

"But she occasionally uses her columns to lecture other women on pet peeves. A recent 'For Women Only' article lambasted those who took off their shoes on the bus. 'It's wrong,' she said with a laugh."

Synchronicity & Conflict

Weird things happening of late...
My read is that they're spiritual in origin. But it can be difficult to decide if a string of events is mere coincidence or something more...

Synchronicity is up there in the the title of this post and, for those of you that don't use that word everyday, here's Wikipedia's link to it. And, here's a brief quote from that article:

"It differs from mere coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic that is being expressed through meaningful relationships or events."

If you've read the last 4 or 5 posts here, you'll see what may be synchronicity in action. This post will focus on just one instance of this train of Related Events:

Yesterday I wrote about Conflict. Right after I posted, my friend walked in the room and asked me to go to an event with him. I was particularly exhausted but felt the event would be interesting so I said, "Yes!".

We arrived and others arrived and the group finally consisted of:
*Two white males in their 60's
*Two black males in their 70's
*Two black females, one in her 70's and one in her 20's
*Two white females, 90's and 60-70s

I was a visitor but all the others were there to talk about Unity--specifically, action to end racism and bigotry in the city.

After a lot of agenda checking and goal and vision talk, one of the men (black) started a rant about the police and fire department's totally lack of racial integration. Everyone else sat there in, what seemed to me, placid acceptance (found out after the event that he was prone to do this).

Suddenly, the other black man challenged him to put up or shut up (his words, however, were mild as milk) and dared him to go the next day to those civil services and do, at least, some investigation of the problem.

Everything calmed down and the man who'd been ranting praised the other guy for being extremely positive! [ Hey, I mean, these were people seeking unity, right? ]

So what happened? Was this mere coincidence--writing about conflict then experiencing it so Dramatically?

Has there been some deeper Spiritual Reason for my week of apparent synchronicity?

My jury's still out on this issue:
but...
please, submit some "evidence" or give some "testimony" in the Comments...
Or, take your concerns over to our BackYard...