Save Mother Earth

(Video Included at the End of this Article)

Misogyny is defined as dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. We think it’s as bad as a president bragging he grabbed women by their private parts. But it’s not. It is far worse.

Misogyny is a symptom of a serious cancer – terminal, if we don’t take care. This cancer is patriarchy.

Patriarchy is a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line. It is a system in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded.

We see the signs of men holding the power everywhere. We see global destruction on the back of a whole lot of so-called masculine traits such as aggression, competitiveness, sternness, discipline, authoritarian dominance, ego power, expansionism and elite insensitivity.

Mother Earth is dying

A patriarchal tumour is damaging our world and destroying its inhabitants. Our habitat, our Mother Earth is dying.

Matthew Fox dreamed of Mother Earth’s death in the nineteen eighties, perhaps not knowing just how prophetic his dream would be in 2017. Today his Legacy Project has on its website:

“For those of us working and praying to protect life on this beautiful planet, with its diverse people and cultures and ecosystems and species, the months since Election Day 2016 have seemed very dark indeed, with all we’ve worked for – civil rights and liberties, environmental regulations, public education, affordable healthcare and more – apparently under attack.”

Throughout history is has been the patriarchs that attack. They do indeed have Mother Earth under attack now.
Matriarchs care for the family. They nurture and love. They are the fountains of gentleness, kindness, patience, modesty and self-control. Traditionally these are the loving feminine traits of humankind. The nurturing mother is slow to attack.

Our only hope

We must hope for Mother to rise up gently and control rampant patriarchy. She will not attack for it is not her nature. But she may persuade those that are able to hear.

Our hope lies in the feminine spirit. The spirit of the beautiful forest and the co-creating oceans. Oneness and love of Mother Earth must be defended by her extension, her creation… her gentle feminine creatures.

Our only hope is for masculine bravado – the egotistical arrogance of big businessmen in power – to be touched by softer feminine traits.

Those traits were rising in the world until recently – albeit imperfectly. Surely they are not completely forgotten.

The madmen must have consciences. Surely all the decades of rising global liberalism, acceptance and tolerance that went before the last few years cannot come to naught. Surely we have some collective memory of the decades of enlightenment, the times of awakening to our human goodness expressed in post-modern philosophy, psychology and science since World War II.

We must hope the madmen remember.

If not, the mad patriarchs in power will lead the human species to total ruin. If people go about protecting their own kind, making their own countries “great again”, flexing their muscles over the earth and its resources, our time on this sublime blue ball will soon run out.

Mother Earth’s way

Human power, for all its ingenuity, is still like nothing compared to Mother Earth’s. And if patriarchs continue to disregard the wise old lady, her ways will let them sow what they reap… destruction.

In the words of Matthew Fox in his book “The Coming of the Cosmic Christ”, patriarchy cannot measure up to Mother Earth’s immense blessings which we so easily take for granted – until tragedy strikes. He quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

“In spite of all the farmer’s work and worry, he can’t reach down to where the seed is slowly transmuted into summer. The earth bestows.”

If the earth can no longer bestow, it will simply weep as it lets go and watches us die.

We are all matriarchs

Masculine patriarchy and feminine matriarchy are not the exclusive domains of male and female respectively. They are traits of the typical male and female. But we all have male and female traits in us.

It is the feminine matriarch in all of us that stands between the human species’ continuation and destruction. We all need to connect to our feminine side, and hence to our habitat and to our communities and societies with compassion. We need to experience the nurturing nature of the archetypal Mother.

What we call feminine is spiritual. Our masculine society is anti-spiritual.

Yet we have women wanting to be treated as equals. And men disallowing it. But we’ve got it all backwards. Women – at least those that value the soft, compassionate aspects of their natures – can never be equal to masculine men. They are more. They are in touch with spiritual intelligence that masculine-dominated society lacks.

We all – male and female alike – have that matriarch within us. We have spiritual intelligence at our truest selves and we can all bear the fruits of feminine spirit.

How to release feminine spirit

The best way to bear the fruits of feminine spirit in our lives is to meditate. Meditation helps us let go of our egotistical paradigm, which is dominated by masculinity. We access the silent love within us to let go of aggression and all the other traits that boost and protect our ego-selves, our false selves, in a world of dog-eat-dog.

The silence of divine love is the domain of feminine spirit. It is here that we become accustomed to our feminine side, whether male or female. For it is here that we experience compassion, like a nurturing mother. It is here that we are granted tears of empathy, tears that move us to justice, peace and gentle stewardship of our world.

So the call to save Mother Earth is a call to meditate.

Let us spread the word and hope that compassion is felt in the hearts of the patriarchs, and that they soften their ways. Let us hope that madmen meditate and remember the matriarchal love from which they originate and to which they are destined to return. Do not lose hope… feminine spirit has a persuasive power all of its own.