by Heather Plett | Jan 7, 2011 | Passion, Wisdom
Over the holidays, I have been making my way through Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi. It’s a fascinating memoir about a university professor who, after teaching in universities in Iran for a number of years and giving up out of sheer frustration because there are so many restrictions put on her and the way students are allowed to learn, begins a small private class in her home. She invites a circle of young women to study some of the classics that have been banned by an oppressive regime.
More than simply the story of a circle of women reading Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald, it is the story of how the Revolution in Iran silenced the voices of women and anyone who dared to believe something other than what the Ayatollah Komeini believed. It is about how oppression can grow in a place where there once was freedom, how more than half of the population can be silenced by the use of force and bullying. Whether or not they are Muslim, women are forced to wear veils, and are subject to inspections which ensure that they aren’t wearing any make-up, showing any hair or too much skin, or even wearing brightly coloured socks.
As the regime becomes more powerful, some young women are imprisoned, banned from university, and even executed for baring too much skin. Other women are abused or raped because they dare to speak out. One woman – a former government Minister – is tied in a sack and thrown in the river.
The thought that comes to me as I read this is… what is so dangerous about women that for so many centuries, in so many countries, they have been forced into silence? What are those in power really afraid of when they oppress women by forcing them behind veils and out of positions of power?
It’s not just Muslim countries (though those are the most obvious because of the head coverings). I’ve seen it all over the world. Some places it’s obvious, and other places it’s more subtle. In North America, for example, women appear to have great freedom, and yet if they speak too loudly they are subject to ridicule and abuse. (And not just by men – women are often the first to call a strong woman a “bitch”.)
I ask again… WHAT is so dangerous about us?
In Muslim tradition, in my understanding, it’s mostly about sensuality – women are dangerous because their bare skin causes men to fall into temptation.
But is that all? I don’t think so.
I think there’s a deep and abiding fear (all over the world) that a combination of women’s wisdom, power, sensuality, and passion could dramatically change the course of the world.
I think the old guard – both men and women who are most comfortable with masculine wisdom – are terrified that if the women’s true voice were to be heard more loudly, the world they’re comfortable with would be transformed beyond recognition.
Change is frightening – for all of us. But I think it’s absolutely necessary. I think women need to stand up and say “Look around! See the poverty, the oppression, the human slavery, the damage we’re doing to our earth. This world NEEDS changing!”
And then we need to get our hands dirty and get to work. NOT by overthrowing those who’ve lead before, but by bringing our wisdom to their tables and working with them.
What I find especially beautiful about Reading Lolita in Tehran is the reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. Despite the way that the women are being oppressed and forced to hide their beauty and strength and read literature in secret, their spirits are not crushed. Their beauty and strength is not gone – it’s just waiting to be uncovered again.
I am reminded once again of the woman I met in Bangladesh (above photo). When I motioned to her that I was interested in taking her picture, she let me, but then motioned to me to wait – she wanted me to take another one. Removing her black head covering, she revealed a colourful one underneath. THIS was the version she wanted me to see. I can’t help but wonder what she might have revealed if we’d been in the privacy of her home.
What fire lies smouldering beneath those strong eyes?
by Heather Plett | Jan 2, 2011 | Joy, Sophia, Wisdom
From an ad for meditation cushions, it jumped out at me.
Don’t just do something. Sit there.
Hmmm. Clever. I liked it enough to clip it out and add it to my vision board for 2011.
Yesterday, after dropping my niece off at the airport, I brought a chai latte and my journal to my son’s grave. It’s the place I often go when I need a little quiet contemplation, and it seemed right to visit on the first day of a new year.
As much as I speak with some bravado about letting joy direct my path this year, there’s a piece of me that’s still hanging onto some “oh my gosh I quit my job and I have no idea how to build a business” stress. I often wake up in the morning with a vague feeling of panic. I’m navigating a whole new world without a map, and that’s scary.
Those are the things I was thinking as I sat at Matthew’s grave. When I quit my job, I knew I’d need some transition time, and I took it. That’s what the month of October was for. I thought I could put it in a neat little box, and then on November 1st I’d be rarin’ to go. But it didn’t quite happen that way. Transition took longer than I expected. I jumped into my teaching role, but when it came to the other stuff I was planning to do, I just wasn’t finding a lot of momentum.
“Okay then, give yourself a little longer,” I thought. “Teaching is taking a lot of energy. Perhaps that’s enough for now, and then on January 1st you’ll be ready to rush full speed into a myriad of projects.”
So it was that, on January 1st, I sat at my son’s grave. “Now is the time,” I thought. “Today is the day that the momentum needs to kick into high gear.”
Sadly, though, there is still so much that isn’t clear. No lightening bolts have flashed words across the sky “this is your path, follow it and don’t deviate. Here are your ten easy steps to success.” Almost every day I think up a new project or a new direction (there is no shortage of inspiration). But after the ideas comes… nothing. No momentum, very few accomplishments, and no knock-your-socks-off clarity of direction.
I have to admit, a niggling fear keeps eating at me that I need to get better at writing business plans, and action plans, and marketing plans and goals and objectives and … well, maybe THEN – if there were an artificially constructed linear path laid out in front of me – I’d kick myself into full gear and follow it.
Into the cold wind at the grave, I whispered “Sophia God, show me some direction. Give me clarity in what I should do. I am confident that I am following a path I’ve been called to follow, and yet it still feels so unclear.”
In a moment, the wind whipped a whirlwind of snow around the grave. A spiral. Not a linear path.
After the whirlwind, the stillness. The blank slate of fresh snow like frozen waves drifting across rows and rows of graves.
And in the stillness, these words came back to me “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”
Really? That’s it? That’s the wisdom I came here to find? That’s the brave new world that January 1 is ushering in?
Inside the warmth of my vehicle, I scribbled my questions in my journal. Stillness? Is that the path I’m supposed to take?
“Yes, stillness. Stop the scurrying and worrying and hurrying. Stop the wheel-spinning and the trying too hard. Stop the striving. Stop. And wait. And listen. Pray. Meditate.”
“Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.” (Isaiah 30)
Wisdom won’t be tied up in little boxes to be reached for and plucked along artificially constructed linear paths. Wisdom comes to us in spirals. In whirlwinds. In whispers. At gravesides. On labyrinth paths. Wisdom appears in a heart that is ready for it. In a heart that is still. In a heart that listens. A heart that waits.
And so, despite the part of me that stubbornly insists I have to be BUSY to have value, I claim this mantra. Don’t just do something. Sit there.
Not exactly a business plan. But it’s the lesson that Sophia God wants me to learn. And relearn. I will try to be a patient student.
* * *
Today, a friend shared this video of David Whyte speaking about the place of poetry in the corporate world, and this poem found me…
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner
by Heather Plett | Aug 31, 2010 | Uncategorized, Wisdom
Emergency rooms make me cranky.
Lack of sleep makes me even more cranky.
So… after 5 hours in the emergency room in the middle of the night with Julie, who broke the growth plate in her wrist (the part of the bone that’s busy growing in adolescents) in yet another soccer-related injury, I’m not exactly a barrel of laughs today.
Here’s the thing… why oh WHY has nobody figured out how to make an emergency room (and especially the waiting room) a reasonably pleasant (or at least comfortable and somewhat soothing) space to wait in? There are a lot of creative people in this world – why haven’t we invested some of that creative energy into better designs for emergency rooms and hospitals in general?
Basically everyone sitting in an emergency room is under some kind of stress. Nobody WANTS to sit in a crowded uncomfortable room for five hours, waiting to spend five minutes with an over-worked doctor who’s just trying to survive until the end of the shift. Nobody wants to sit in those uncomfortable, straight-backed vinyl-covered chairs, staring at non-descript white walls plastered with ugly stop-smoking posters five years past their prime, craning their necks to see the tiny TV dangling somewhere close to the ceiling in the farthest corner of the room.
And while I’m venting – what’s up with the system that treats a patient like one of the cattle, shuffled through a corral shute from one nursing station to the next, answering the very same list of questions to three different people? Is there no more efficient, people-centred system than that? Last year, I sat with my mother-in-law and father-in-law in the emergency room, after my father-in-law had made a few dozen visits to the same ER in less than a month’s time, and I wanted to scream when I saw the look of pure exhaustion on my mother-in-law’s face when she had to answer the same questions she’d answered the other countless times she’d been there. You have a frickin’ computer sitting right in front of you, people! WHY didn’t anyone record the answers the last hundred times they were asked? It’s not rocket science and it doesn’t take a Phd in human psychology to know that too many questions when you’re under stress can tip you over the edge.
Here’s my theory on the whole thing. We have let the industrial revolution shape too many of our spaces and our systems and we’re still a little lost trying to figure out how to dig ourselves out from underneath the frameworks that have turned us into consumers and producers and forms and problems-to-be-solved rather than people.
We have designed hospitals like factories, thinking more about production, efficiency, and TQM (don’t even get me started on that) than about people and families and humanity. We have developed health care systems that are less about health than they are about medicine; less about people than they are about systems; less about healing than they are about bandaids. We make decisions based on what costs less, what will pacify the most number of voters, what appears the most efficient to our funders, and what will push the highest number of people through the conveyor belt that is our public services. (I could go on a similar rant about the education system, but I’ll spare you that one.)
I think it’s time to rise up, people. I think it’s time to stop the conveyor belt. I think it’s time to stop and look around at the victims of these flawed systems and figure out what’s best for THEM rather than what’s best for the clunky machinery of our systems. I think it’s time for compassion, intuitive thinking, people-centred decision-making, and LOVE.
I think it’s time to apply a bit more of our Sophia wisdom to all of this! Do I hear an amen?
by Heather Plett | Aug 16, 2010 | Beauty, Wisdom, women
My sister and I took my two teenage daughters to see the movie Eat Pray Love this past weekend. It was enjoyable, if for no other reason than that it gave this wanderer lots of pretty location eye candy to feast my eyes on. And, as a mother who sat watching with her teenagers, I was glad that the producers chose to keep it G-rated. All in all, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
But… (you knew there was going to be a but, didn’t you?) the fact that I brought teenage girls to the movie also made me cognizant of a few things that concern me somewhat about not only the movie, but the bigger picture of what this movie & book represent. I couldn’t help but think what messages my 13 and 14 year old daughters are picking up in this era of what Bitch Magazine calls “priv lit”. Here are some of my thoughts on that subject:
1. The movie (even more than the book) does a poor job of establishing why the character is wracked with such angst that she has to ditch a marriage and walk away from her life for a year. The impression that you get in the movie is that Gilbert is just a bit bored and needs to inject some enthusiasm in her life. Well, call me old fashioned, but I don’t want my daughters to believe that you leave a marriage because you’re “a bit bored”. When you’re in a relationship, you commit to it and you work damn hard at making it work. I’m not saying every marriage is going to work (or that they should), but leaving is not a decision that’s made as lightly as the movie would imply. (Granted – they didn’t have a lot of time to tell that story.) Not so long ago, my daughters watched some of that commitment at work, when my husband and I put the whole “in sickness and in health” vow to the test and decided that love was worth sticking around for. Hopefully they’re watching us more than they’re watching the movie screen.
2. I’m all for self-improvement and “living your best life”, but… well, just how dangerous is the message that we’re communicating to our youth that we as women are “entitled” to spending hoardes of money traveling around the world and finding ourselves? What about the “giving back” part of that? When do we remember that our rights have to be balanced with responsibility? Sure it’s good (and important) to spend time growing in our spirituality and learning more about our giftedness, but then what? Then we get to flit away to an island with a sexy Brazillian and never have another care in the world? I guess I’m still too committed to the idea that we find ourselves in order that we can better serve the world. (And… you might argue that Gilbert is doing just that by writing books, etc., but my point is that my daughters only pick up a one-sided view by watching the movie.)
3. Along the same lines, I can’t help but sigh a little about the “luxury of angst” when I have met women in Africa who have to walk 10 kilmetres to fetch water for their families, or women in India who’ve had to give up their daughters (and lose them into the sex trade) to keep the rest of their families alive. Is it right that we get to spend so much of our time and money on ourselves “because we’re worth it”, when some of the luxuries we’re enjoying are on the backs of the poor?
4. As this article so eloquently suggests, maybe all of this priv lit that represents the post-feminist era is actually sending us backwards instead of forwards. “But though Oprahspeak pays regular lip service to empowerment, much of Winfrey’s advice actually moves women away from political, economic, and emotional agency by promoting materialism and dependency masked as empowerment, with evangelical zeal.” Maybe, while we get lost in this culture of “self-enlightenment for our own sake”, we’ll miss the bigger picture of how we can impact real change in the world.
5. And a bonus quote from the article linked above… “It’s no secret that, according to America’s marketing machine, we’re living in a “postfeminist” world where what many people mean by “empowerment” is the power to spend their own money.” Does spending money make us empowered? Really? Maybe we could seek empowerment instead by simplicity and generosity and justice. (I couldn’t help but notice that, although the main character left New York with just a duffle bag, she was still wearing a different outfit in nearly every scene of the movie.)
It’s not that the movie was horrible – it was actually quite enjoyable and there were parts of it that genuinely inspired me. However as I continue to imagine what gifts I’m going to offer the world as I build my consulting/writing practice (and dream of workshops, retreats, etc.), I find I have to examine some of the self-improvement/self-enlightenment/mindfulness work and determine which of it is moving us forward. Which of it is snake oil? And which of it is making us an even more self-centred consumerist culture than we already are?
As I’ve said in the past, I want to imagine what it looks like if “Sophia Rises” and we all learn to trust our feminist wisdom more deeply and let it impact the way we interact with the world and each other. Contrary to what I may have said above, some of it will mean that we have to take lessons from the Elizabeth Gilberts of this world and focus more of our attention on beauty, spirituality and relationships. Those are all very good things and they will help us see our way forward. BUT we have to guard against the temptation to turn these things into self-serving pleasure seeking consumerism.
by Heather Plett | Aug 9, 2010 | Wisdom
For many years
I searched for wisdom.
I read endless books,
asked many wise teachers
took more courses than I can remember.
I turned to my father, my mother, my brothers, my sister.
I gathered friends and colleagues.
“Do you have wisdom?”
I asked of the sages, the philosophers, the saints.
“Can I have a piece of what you have?”
I begged of the writers, the teachers, the bloggers.
I gathered it all like a desperate hoarder,
clutching at pieces of whatever I could find.
Praying they wouldn’t slip away
like bugs scampering away from an overturned rock.
And like a harvester,
I winnowed and sifted the good from the bad.
I turned to the wilderness,
and for long days I searched there,
among the trees, the frogs, the rocks,
“Is wisdom stored in you?”
I asked them all.
“Come sit with me,” said the rock.
“Just sit. Stop searching and rest for awhile.”
“But I have work to do,” said I. “Wisdom still needs to be found.”
“Sitting helps,” said the frog. “Just try it.”
And so I tried to sit.
But my body was restless, yearning to move.
To turn over one more rock, to beg of one more sage.
My mind ached at all that I was missing.
“There’s a book I haven’t read!” I cried.
“I must go!”
My heart cried out for more conversation.
“There’s a sage I haven’t talked to! Surely she will know the way!”
The tree sighed.
“Sit,” she said. “Rest from your endless gathering.”
And so I sat.
And sat.
And sat.
And waited.
And prayed.
I tried to get up again and again, to carry on with the search.
But the rocks, trees, frogs, and rivers pleaded with me.
“Sit.”
And slowly, with the morning sun poking over the horizon,
wisdom appeared where I’d forgotten to look for it.
Deep in the places God had buried it so deep I didn’t think to look.
In my mind, my soul, my heart, my body.
Wisdom was there all along.
