Conversations with the Sacred
Dear Readers,
One of my fascinations with Woman's Voice is that interest in women's ways of speaking, what we speak about, how we sound when we speak, how we impact others with our voices has been the subject of commentary since ancient times. Sometimes it was glorious praise such as the poet Sappho received during her lifetime. Commentary could also be bitterly critical. Going back to ancient Greece in the 8th to 7th centuries B.C.E. within one volume, Hesiod's "Theogony," there are examples of both lyrical praise and biting criticism of both women's language and the sound of our voices.
As long ago as the 8th century B.C.E. was--2800 years!--this was not the earliest writing. A more ancient civilization, long buried in sand by the time of the Greeks, gave birth to writing, to poetry, and to religion. These first peoples were the Sumerians of Mesopotamia--living in the watery lagoons of modern southern Iraq.
It was a harsh land even then and, yet, these people created an organized and thriving civilization and culture that invented writing around the year 3500 B.C.E.--1800 years before the Greeks emerged from their agricultural roots to organize communities around the marketplace.
What is most remarkable about the artifacts of writing from Sumer is that all the writing is original and in the form exactly as it was written. If you look at it, the writing is marked on pieces of clay with wedge-shaped instruments like pens. We are not just looking at words on a page, on these clay tablets we see the hand itself that made the words.
When translated, these clay tablets were found to contain, among other documents, a body of sacred literature written by women about the sacred feminine. In many ways we can say that this literature is the first Woman's Voice. In addition, from this literature, we know that the first identified writer was a woman named Enheduanna, a priestess of the goddess of heaven and earth, Inanna.
What interested me even more is that Enheduanna writes about herself, her struggles, and her feelings in conversation with the goddess Inanna as much as she is writing the sacred liturgy. I found that I could relate to all of it as much as if she'd been a writer in my women's writing group.
From these writings we have both the voice of the writer/priestess and the voice of the sacred feminine. It is a conversation that is as alive in us 21st century American women as it was over 4,000 years ago.
I feel astonishingly tender thinking about all this. What particularly touches me is the direct evidence of this relationship and conversation between human woman and the divine feminine. This conversation was not just personal, however, it was part of the sacred liturgy of the people. It spoke for both men and women and on behalf of both men and women even though the majority of priests in ancient Sumer were women.
Imagine how it might be today if the majority of our clergy were women. I am quite certain that how we see women, how we listen to women, how we hear women--our level of attentiveness and our attitudes toward women would be so different. If we went to worship in the church of the divine feminine, our reverence would color our attitudes toward the women in our lives, create a reverence and a respect for women's voices.
The novel "The Da Vinci Code" was not a phenomenon--it spoke to a longing in our hearts that reflects the most ancient relationship we have to the sacred. It spoke to the loss we've felt in missing the living presence of the feminine divine-a loss we didn't even know we had until this novel awakened a joy in us with the possibility that the sacred feminine has been walking among us all along.
A few evenings ago I began to transition our conversation toward a renewed commitment to share my passion about this work I call Woman's Voice. Tonight I begin at the very beginning with woman's First Voice.
To hear this First Voice is to hear the full range of our woman's ability to express our every embodied emotion and experience--and to celebrate.
I invite you, Dear Readers, to stay with me as we create from this modest beginning our own conversation about Woman's Voice and the sacred feminine as we experience and express it in our everyday lives.
And, as always, my readers, I thank you for joining me here in this space. I thank my special helpers for accompanying me and guiding me on my journey. I thank you all.
One of my fascinations with Woman's Voice is that interest in women's ways of speaking, what we speak about, how we sound when we speak, how we impact others with our voices has been the subject of commentary since ancient times. Sometimes it was glorious praise such as the poet Sappho received during her lifetime. Commentary could also be bitterly critical. Going back to ancient Greece in the 8th to 7th centuries B.C.E. within one volume, Hesiod's "Theogony," there are examples of both lyrical praise and biting criticism of both women's language and the sound of our voices.
As long ago as the 8th century B.C.E. was--2800 years!--this was not the earliest writing. A more ancient civilization, long buried in sand by the time of the Greeks, gave birth to writing, to poetry, and to religion. These first peoples were the Sumerians of Mesopotamia--living in the watery lagoons of modern southern Iraq.
It was a harsh land even then and, yet, these people created an organized and thriving civilization and culture that invented writing around the year 3500 B.C.E.--1800 years before the Greeks emerged from their agricultural roots to organize communities around the marketplace.
What is most remarkable about the artifacts of writing from Sumer is that all the writing is original and in the form exactly as it was written. If you look at it, the writing is marked on pieces of clay with wedge-shaped instruments like pens. We are not just looking at words on a page, on these clay tablets we see the hand itself that made the words.
When translated, these clay tablets were found to contain, among other documents, a body of sacred literature written by women about the sacred feminine. In many ways we can say that this literature is the first Woman's Voice. In addition, from this literature, we know that the first identified writer was a woman named Enheduanna, a priestess of the goddess of heaven and earth, Inanna.
What interested me even more is that Enheduanna writes about herself, her struggles, and her feelings in conversation with the goddess Inanna as much as she is writing the sacred liturgy. I found that I could relate to all of it as much as if she'd been a writer in my women's writing group.
From these writings we have both the voice of the writer/priestess and the voice of the sacred feminine. It is a conversation that is as alive in us 21st century American women as it was over 4,000 years ago.
I feel astonishingly tender thinking about all this. What particularly touches me is the direct evidence of this relationship and conversation between human woman and the divine feminine. This conversation was not just personal, however, it was part of the sacred liturgy of the people. It spoke for both men and women and on behalf of both men and women even though the majority of priests in ancient Sumer were women.
Imagine how it might be today if the majority of our clergy were women. I am quite certain that how we see women, how we listen to women, how we hear women--our level of attentiveness and our attitudes toward women would be so different. If we went to worship in the church of the divine feminine, our reverence would color our attitudes toward the women in our lives, create a reverence and a respect for women's voices.
The novel "The Da Vinci Code" was not a phenomenon--it spoke to a longing in our hearts that reflects the most ancient relationship we have to the sacred. It spoke to the loss we've felt in missing the living presence of the feminine divine-a loss we didn't even know we had until this novel awakened a joy in us with the possibility that the sacred feminine has been walking among us all along.
A few evenings ago I began to transition our conversation toward a renewed commitment to share my passion about this work I call Woman's Voice. Tonight I begin at the very beginning with woman's First Voice.
To hear this First Voice is to hear the full range of our woman's ability to express our every embodied emotion and experience--and to celebrate.
I invite you, Dear Readers, to stay with me as we create from this modest beginning our own conversation about Woman's Voice and the sacred feminine as we experience and express it in our everyday lives.
And, as always, my readers, I thank you for joining me here in this space. I thank my special helpers for accompanying me and guiding me on my journey. I thank you all.
posted by Knowing Woman at 7:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home