What do we (and in particular men), need to bear-in-mind

As a woman, I’m all for the empowerment of women, but what does that actually mean? In my experience men who want to help empower women might just be peddling an insidious form of patriarchy if their own identity is tied up in this role. A man who wants to help empower women might just be dependent on disempowered women for his sense of self worth. Therefore when the  woman in question really does find her power he has no idea how to deal with it, is threatened by it and might use shame and rejection as a result of this unconscious bias. In my experience of this has been from older men, who seem to hold the Christian fantasy of Eve, the meek and mild mannered woman, who’s behaviour is ‘pleasant’ and predictable, but above all deferent to men! Hardly an empowered archetype. 

I sometimes think, that rather than men being concerned with empowering women, they should get together and look at their fear of what an empowered woman might mean in their world. No less because any woman on the road to finding her power will, more often than not, have to navigate the territory of her own anger. Terrifying for her and others! Culturally we are called to reject and shame her and while I’m no more a fan of an angry woman, or man come to that matter than the next person, we have to face the fact that women hold a deep-seated anger about the patriarchy and there is no way around that anger, the only way – is through. 

Emotions are not there to be held onto, but to help us navigate through the swamp-forest of our psyche’s awakening. But in order to journey through an emotion, we have to allow ourselves to enter it entirely. This can be terrifying and dangerous and with anger it’s a good idea to be supported through it, in case what comes out is violent towards ourselves or others. But journey through it we must, in order to find who we are and what we want?

If your idea of empowering a woman is to ask what she wants and give it to her, you don’t understand a damn thing! Women, if brought up in a patriarchal system, have no idea what they want. Indeed, nor do many men. For a woman of patriarchal heritage, ‘wanting’ is an alien concept. Keeping safe is primary, keeping the men around you happy so that you are safe, is primary. Therefore what men want is primary. What we want as women does not simply materialise in our minds on being asked. So first we must find our ability to want.  

This all brings to mind the story of the Loathly Lady. King Arthur is challenged by a dark knight to solve the riddle of discovering what above all else it is that women want. He asks many women but the answers he gets are all different. Chocolates, flowers, a husband, a fairytale wedding, food for my child, healing for my mother. Then Arthur meets Sir Gawaine who joins the quest to solve the riddle and they ride out throughout the land together, but to no avail. Then one day they meet a hideous old hag in the forest, she claims to have the answer, but will only bestow it upon them in return for the hand of Sir Gawaine in marriage. The valiant Gawaine agrees, so committed is he to Arthur. So they are married, and that night when he enters the wedding chamber he finds, not the old hag, but a beautiful young woman. The Lady Ragnell. Gawaine is confused, but she explains she is the very same bride, but that she had a cursed spell put upon her by a sorcerer many years ago. Now that Gawaine has married her, half the spell is broken. “Half?” said Gwaine. “Yes, I will be like this half the time, and you my husband must choose, would you have me beautiful by day or by night?” Gawaine after some careful consideration refused the choice, handing it back to the Lady to choose. In so doing the rest of the spell is broken, for he has given her what she wants above all else, sovereignty over her choices. 

The only trouble with this story, is that we need to be in touch with what we really want, in order to use our sovereignty to make those choices. As I write this I am very aware that I am in the territory of privilege, a person free from fear and hunger, and therefore able to explore the philosophical depths of ‘wanting’, but hopefully there is something of use here for all women. 

How do we find our want? To me this is akin to the holy grail. We quest across the world looking for an object when all along what we seek is within. The mind wants to find some-thing, but only through the body can we come to know, and here in lies the problem not just of the patriarchy but of science and rationality as well. 

In our western cultures mind is king. But, while the mind is an excellent analytical tool, it is not who we are. Ultimately the question for all of us, men and women, is how do we come home to ourselves so that we might know who we are and therefore what we want? When it comes to empowering women, to my mind this is a very important question. 

Women bleed every month with the cycle of the moon. This body has it’s own intelligence, it is the piece of the earth we inhabit and because we are more connected to it due to our luna cycle, we are also inherently more connected with this – the consciousness of matter. The intelligence of the mind is secondary to this primary force, which as many women know is not passive but active. It is akin to a language that the rational mind of the modern era has been hell-bent on usurping, unlearning, belittling, denying the existence of. Which is quite an extraordinary thing when you stop to think about it, for the mind is formed of this primary force of material intelligence.

Women more than men are still connected to this intelligence, which speaks a truth through feelings that we know is far more reliable than any mind. With practice we come to understand this language of the felt sense and live guided by its subtle nudges and impulses. It is through this we come to know who we are and what we want. 

The beauty of this way of being is that it is ‘plugged in’ to the earth network. What we want becomes congruent once more with the interests of all earthly matter. We move into a role of ‘service to’ rather than ‘consumer of’ and with this shift, purpose and happiness are found. 

So, perhaps if we really want to empower women, one of the most important things we can do is to stop the obsessive rubbishing of these other windows of knowing that are not rational or scientific. Because this earthly knowledge, experienced through the felt senses of the body, lies beyond the jurisdiction of our current scientific and rational capabilities. 

Women want to create change in the world, but you have to let them do it their way, with their language, listen to them, try not to judge things that fall outside of your own understanding and experience, and ultimately cultivate the humility to learn from their way of being and doing in the world.

I am the waters 
of the rivers flow
I am the earth 
beneath the leaves 
of the woodland floor

I am the rocks 
worn smooth
by the river god 
as he makes sensuous love 
to the depths of my soul

I am the roots of the oak
that plunge deep in the earth
and protect the river bank 
from this god’s wildest passions

My soul sits 
looking at me 
through the eyes 
of my dog 

What are we doing here
inside these 4 walls,
when we could be out there
being our wilder selves?

The pull is all consuming,
letting no other thought
rest in my mind,
making all actions
awkward and tortured

But where is that 
wild place 
that can fulfil 
this longing,

where wolf 
still hunts deer,
beaver 
still build dams,
and eagle 
soars in the sky,

They are the
ghosts
who’s presence
I crave

I die a thousand 
of their deaths
every time, 
these fur bound eyes 
gaze up at mine.

by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes

This poem was a piece of writing that came as a stream of consciousness while sitting by a mountain river. I didn’t really understand it until a year later, when in the drought of 2018, here in the lake district, I cleared out an ancient wellspring. Once the sole source of water to the house where I was gardening (the new water source from the stream having dried up), the “Boggin Well” was brought back to life. People knew it was there but no-one in living memory had seen it cleaned out, alive. It was full of stinking anaerobic leaves that had collected there over decades, if you didn’t know it was there, you would be none the wiser. The clearing of the Boggin Well turned out to be quite an extraordinary experience, one that words can’t articulate. It was as if something in me cleared as this wellspring was brought back into being, able to breathe once more. It brought to my mind this piece of writing which at once made sense, and with a few adjustment took the form of this poem.

The reflected light that shows on the log
tells a story of the waters
that flow beneath

but to see into those watery depths
and what they may contain
you must go closer still

You must venture across the fallen trees
to the wellspring source
there where the dipper goes

The reflected light that shows on the log
is so alluring,
yet beautiful enough from here

you could stay here and admire it
from this place
for all eternity

From that place the dipper now comes
the parent
and the noisy, hungry baby

it spends most of its time screaming for food
but then occasionally will just get on
and find some for itself

that tussle of life
dependent
independent

And then the light that shows on the log fades
as the sun continues its course
and you are in danger of forgetting
that wellspring source

Go, drink from your source
everyday
so you don’t forget

Not just so you don’t forget
but so in that drinking
the very waters of your being
are slowly transformed

to be of that source
and that source
alone

The tree that grows its roots
around the rock at the edge of the river
drinks when it pleases him

but he also runs the risk
of flood waters
undermining his feet

So he wraps his root
like tentacles
around those rocks and along the shore
making homes for all those creatures
that inhabit that edge

Go dwell there amongst his roots
Be a creature of the edge
so you may take shelter from him
and drink from her

the wellspring of your life
your source
your soul

The Boggin Well

by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes

The No5 to Blackbird Leys
sounds like a place from a different time
where thick hedgerows ramble
with berries and thorns
and blackbirds rule the roost.

I think I’d like to visit there
and be the stranger in their world,
but I fear their thicket thorny home
will be long gone
the name a ghost
a memory of a wilder time,
where man was not sole master of our world
and other beings had a say
in how it was the land might lay.

Blackbirds in blackberry leys
laid waste by paved modernity.
That divine untidiness
wild and ripe in possibility
of hedgehog, stoat, thrust and wren,
alas I fear they are long gone.

I don’t want to live
in a world of wild ghosts
for in that world I feel half dead
I want that wild chaos instead.
For it brings forth my soul in song
and I am alive and new again.

I’m excited to be embarking on this new adventure with Amy, we hope this will be the first of many evenings where we, and in time we hope other people, will join us to share their creative edge.

by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes

The world was made
to love
and be loved in.

The song thrush
exquisite,
calls in
the first light of day.

I lay in bed
of feathers
warmed against the cool
morning air.

Enchantment all around
a robin
now joins
this chorused dawn.

To think
I’d learned
to dread
the day.

A sense now,
a silver thread
from childhood
recalled
of wonder,
curiosity,
excitement,

I am here!
To sing
my song back
into this world.