"....So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service."                

—Jimmy Carter: Losing My Religion for Equality

I was first raped at six. At six years old I was taught to obey, to keep quiet, to be faithful, and to pretend the sickness in my home wasn't there and that I did not matter, nor did my mother. I was taught that to question was not my place, not in the home, not of my father.  To question my clergy was to challenge God, which was equal to delving into the mysteries, where Satan ruled. I would be dis-fellowshipped for "my rebellion.”  And so I lived, enslaved and battered by the loss of my innocence and the sound of my happy heart. Imprinted with that loss I was set to follow a pattern that would lead me for many, many years to seek only that which would affirm my lowly station on earth. I was raised in a culture that taught me to hide even from myself, the Feminine Divine. In that blindness to the feminine within,  I made all of my decisions including the  spouses I  chose. From that same blindness I  carried and gave birth to a son-alone. From that same blindness the choice to give him up was made. In that blindness I was giving away all my power, my softness and stood resolute in my birthright as a female in servitude.

Today many years later, the quote above deepens my calling within to contribute to the healing of the earth through the healing of our families, starting with the feminine. I had not a clear idea, or rather I could not figure where to start or what I could contribute. I began to question more fearlessly than I ever had, or at least more clearly, why are women so poorly treated? Why is the earth run in a patriarchal fashion, men above the women, woman to serve man? Who on earth ever came up with the appropriateness of this, as some "natural" way of things, the collective crushing of the AUTHENTIC feminine footprint upon our psyche?  And more deeply,  what on earth am I doing to perpetuate it? That for me became the bigger question. What am I doing to perpetuate this global castration that literally pushes our feminine expression into a pandemic of prostitution, through one form of slavery or another? What is my role, the role of the female in centuries, if not millenniums of old rituals to subjugate and destroy? After all, this collective castration in slavery and rape is not simply of the female nor is it only perpetrated by the male. It is the castration of the Soul from the breather of Its Life, both male and female, by male and female as though we are somehow separate from one another and at war. The imprint and impact from "she" must be equal to "he.”  What and who on earth deemed this "the natural order of things"? Who on Earth? My first aha; Man. Natural? Hardly. There is nothing natural in being conquered, muted, beaten, nor is there anything natural in muting, beating, and conquering. I refuse to believe that to be barbaric and superior is a natural state.  I have discovered  my first answers.  Man made this, not God, and NO! there is nothing natural about it. For me, these are but a few of the answers. But, it still does not answer for me what my role is in all of this, in my own slavery. How is it that I have become part of the global village that  teaches my sons to rape and my daughters to shut up and swallow? 

The answers began to come months ago at a Crones Counsel meeting when I learned of Half the Sky Movement. This movement stayed with me though I had no idea the gravity of its function nor the plight that it revealed until through a Facebook post I read a quote. "More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide  in any one decade than people slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century." Nicholas D. Kristoff, Sheryl WuDunn. I then found an invitation to One Billion Rising. 

I was the statistic for which one billion men and women are rising. I've lived that story. I was the incested, the raped, the high school drop out. I was the widow, the pregnant teen, the drug addict, I was the cutter, the divorced, abused wife. I was the trip to jail. I was the homeless. I was the ward of the State, the runaway, the sex for goods the dis-fellowshipped and the excommunicated. I was the black sheep, the alternative lifestyle and the dropped off the face of the earth for years at a time daughter. I am now a participant for that which  One Billion Rising rises and I join, my heart filled with the experience of having found in my life the healing power of love. And I am one with the healing and the healer. I now have clear direction inwhich to send my voice. In recognition that all of my life I have been hearing the call to stand in strength and love, my hand and heart open, I join the prayers of a fractured global village in escaping the poverty of thought that oppresses one half of its population, thereby enslaving its entirety.

So in all the passion, fire, innocence, and immeasurable love with which I first held my son and glimpsed the peace and piece of my Feminine Divine, I will share with every Soul I touch, if only for aninstant, this prayer. It is for every Man and every Woman, every son and daughter. And I, newly cloaked in the wonder of my own wealth excavated over the last 44 years, in Divine Proportion say this prayer, spread this prayer, share this prayer. On February 14th One Billion Rising men and women will dance under one full sky.

May the only empty shoes that day be the ones tossed to dance.

(This blog was written and published under the previous title of Dancing With Jimmy Under a Full Blue Sky.)

 Article Links:

   Image by Jeff Clay: Clayhaus.Net Photography

   Jimmy Carter: Loosing My Religion for Equality

   One Billion Rising

   Half the Sky

   Eve Ensler|Tony Stroebel-Man Prayer

   Hypersmash.com

Shelly Williams has been the Minister of Support, which includes Social Media, for four years at The Arts Organization. Her focus and growing passion at TAO Metaversity is The Academy of Innerdimensional Studies. She is a TAOblogger and has begun a series of blogs intimately focused on Divine Proportion; Excavating the Wealth of the Feminine.

Hy