I’m surprised that I again find myself reviling the word “patriarchy”; I thought I had given all that “feminist” stuff up — when? back in the early ’80s? — can’t really remember when I just got tired of fighting all the time. Tired of my own ideological bullshit. Needed to regroup internally. That took awhile, took most of my 40s, actually, for me to come “to peace” within myself.
But what happened meanwhile, in the outside world? Well, in 1991 we got what we called then, “the Iraq War,” little realizing that it would be followed by another Iraq War in 2003, and in between those years, thanks to the Project for A New American Century, which had, post 9-11, an inside job if ever there was one, a plan to slam in both the Patriot Act and the thrust towards destabilizing and otherwise taking down “seven (Mideast) countries in five years.” starting with Syria. Well, “we” sure did, and are doing that, eh? Trouble is, Syria just won’t stay down. So here we are today, once more embroiled, or about to be, or we seem to be. But check this out, wearefree.tv, a refreshing voice and perspective, if ever there was one. So odd. Don’t know her name!
https://youtu.be/nWVs9WaqOqc
Meanwhile, here’s an editorial I put in Crone Chronicles, issue #7, way back in 1991, in response to that first of Empire’s many planned wars. So happy that more and more of us are beginning to see through the war propaganda bullshit.
TO SUMMON THE GODDESS
by Ann Kreilkamp
This essay was first published as an editorial in Crone Chronicles #7, Spring Equinox 1991.
March 1, 1991. If ever there were a time to summon the Goddess, it is now. Now, the day after the cease-fire with Iraq, when 90 percent of American citizens are identifying with the allied “victory” in the Bush/Saddam Nintendo War on the cradle of civilization.100,000 “enemy forces” and uncounted thousands of civilians lie dead. 1000 oil wells are burning. Three million barrels of oil pollute the Gulf.
Yet Americans are proud. Proud of our advanced electronic gadgetry. ($23,000 for a pair of night-vision glasses?!) Proud of our regained ability to bully the world. Proud of our mesmerized media. Proud of “healing” our divisions from Vietnam. Proud of being able to forget domestic economic and social problems. The apparent lesson of this latest imperial thrust? Might makes right. The boys with the best toys win. This so-called “New World Order” is old wine in a “new” bottle.
Like all wars, the Gulf War had religions overtones. Which (Father) God is the right one? Islam and Christianity: two patriarchal religions slugging it out. Unfortunately, one of them won, eventually perpetuating the conflict, and Earth and other suffering innocents were, as usual, the real losers. (Half of Iraq’s population is (was?) children under 15.)
Let us pray that the Goddess is active within the 10 percent of us who still have our own hearts and minds and souls, who have not sold them for chauvinistic identification with the “victors” in war’s false sense of community, the now-swelling “national pride.”
Let us pray, before it is too late, that we may summon the Goddess to guide us in learning how to transform the violence within ourselves. As Crone May Sarton so eloquently puts it in her At Seventy: A Journal: “Somehow or other we have to find a way, religious or not, of sanctifying life again, for only if we can do that will it be possible to face the worst, and still bear with it in ourselves and heal it in ourselves, because we have again become part of the mystery, given up some primary need to terrorize and subdue, and quite literally, fallen on our knees.”
2 thoughts on “A.K. Reader: “To Summon the Goddess” (1991)”
Thanks, Ann for sharing your editorial from The Crone Chronicles. I remember finding you in Sage Woman and here I am today! Love what you do.
Your Reader,
Denise McQuiston
May Sarton is one of my favorites. Journal of a Solitude was a game changer and I have At Seventy on my bed stand right now.