I knew I had to write about women’s wisdom for “W” April A to Z Blogging Challenge. It has been illuminating to search through my previous writings to see what I’ve said about wisdom as I created topics for the A to Z of women’s legacy. I have found mention of what I see as several types of women’s wisdom.
Historical Wisdom
I believe that one of the primary reasons the world is in a sorry state is that women’s voices, sensibilities, and wisdom has been suppressed, ignored, and ridiculed by men in power. I don’t know how many generations it takes to extinguish a god, but a new one can be created in 200 years or less. And with the entire world in the informational reach of a day’s travel, the information we have to choose from is exponentially greater than that to which our grandmother’s had access.
I think it is time for serious reevaluation of priorities and to re-institutionalize women’s perspectives, values, and ways of knowing into the culture at large. Of course we need women represented at the highest levels of government and business, but more than that we need to simply change things by what we think, write, teach, allow ourselves to say and do. We have to mean and do differently. We can make everything different and better for our granddaughters’ granddaughters.
Survivor Wisdom
On January 19, 2011 I wrote a post entitled THE STRENGTH OF A WOMAN IN TUCSON. Here is a snippet from that post:
As a person who has come to a point in life where she can give and speak from a point of wisdom, she is not to be envied. Wisdom gathers knowledge into us through sadness, trauma, and loss. Wisdom is the balance that comes with perspective showing beginnings and endings, full circles, and fearful beauty of birth and death. Wisdom is nothing I would wish on anyone. For those who have reached its sun and shadows I am most grateful when they share bits of what they have come to know, but it is nothing for which I could ever ask. It is too personal. It is a gift.
Global Wisdom
I wrote about wisdom at a global level.
Acceptance of the Gaia Hypothesis is acceptance of the Earth, our Mater Terra, as a living system. It says nothing of worship, or omniscience, benevolent or otherwise. It alludes to a feminine wisdom. In my mind we could use a little bit more of that…
Wisdom Over Time
At that point I lost my faith for what would turn out to be decades. No God would allow such a significant man working for peace, capable of writing “Imagine,” to be shot and killed.
Two decades later I realized my ability to believe was still there, although it is a mustard seed-sized faith grown wise. To me, Imagine is a hymn. The price of wisdom is great. Goodness exists but it exists through choice. I know it sounds strange to most people, and I don’t know where it comes from, but when you consciously open your life to the greater good, paths emerge before you that you could never have been seen before that conscious decision. Perhaps it is divine guidance, perhaps it is a recognition of iterations of and relationship between patterns in the universe. I don’t know that I will ever know.
There are many wisdoms amongst which we can choose at any given time when we decide to live our legacies. There is an abundance of opportunity in the world of knowledge.