Rich recognizes that coming to grips with the Great Mother, including her powers of creativity and her powers of death and destruction, is essential to male as well as female consciousness, particularly in today’s patriarchal culture. Creativity is key for a new vision to occur, and she invites men to find it within themselves.
She says: I am curious and expectant about the future of the masculine consciousness. I feel in the work of the men whose poetry I read today a deep pessimism and fatalistic grief; and I wonder if it isn’t the masculine side of what women have experienced, the price of masculine dominance.
One thing I am sure of: just as woman is becoming her own midwife, creating herself anew, so man will have to learn to gestate and give birth to his own subjectivity — something he has frequently wanted woman to do for him. . . . Women can no longer be primarily mothers and muses for men: we have our own work cut out for us.
She talks of how we have been “numbing” our powers of creativity and imagination. What is the role creativity plays in our educational systems? What role does art as meditation play in education and academia?
Rich: One of the devastating effects of technological capitalism has been its numbing of the powers of the imagination — specifically, the power to envision new human and communal relationships.
She tells us why she is a feminist and in doing so also indicates that men do not have to be “embodiments of the patriarchal idea.”
I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society, and because I believe that the women’s movement is saying that we’ve come to an edge of history when men — in so far as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea — have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included; and that we can no longer afford to keep the female principle — the mother in all women and the woman in many men — straitened within the tight little postindustrial family, or within any male-induced notion of where the female principle is valid and where it is not.*
*Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1976),98.
And Barbara Charelsworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi, eds, Adrienne Rich’s Poetry (NY: W. W. Norton, 1993), 104f.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times, pp. 70f.
See also, Matthew Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 293-337, 363-379, 397-413.
To read a transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: Gazing upon the possibilities. Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
Does patriarchy render men “dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included”? What is the medicine for this? Do you hear a “deep pessimism and fatalistic grief” in men today? What is the medicine for that?
Recommended Reading
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.” — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.
9 thoughts on “Rich on the Gifts of Feminism to a Patriarchal World”
Both men and women, due to the savage unfathered and unmothered patriarch, have experienced the endangerment of the feminine within themselves… that oppresses and suppresses the gifts of creativity and imagination… especially evident within our educational systems. Recently, at the college where my husband has been teaching, five of the arts programs were cancelled. This wasn’t due to the failure of the programs, as they were all profitably successful. The reason was that the college’s new vision is to focus on academia. When he was asked to be involved in the construction of a new program, that would be replacing the one he coordinated and taught for ten years, in the syllabus outline he was told he could not use the words creativity or imagination… as these weren’t academic enough. This whole experience, of the direction the college is moving in grieved him deeply. The various arts matter in so many ways, and yet colleges do not value this, even when they have gained profitably from offering such programs.
However, the arts will not die out, but rather they will become smaller, privately run institutes, which is perhaps a good thing… for in being dismissed from the college curriculum… the artists and teachers of the arts will discover and recover the freedom from the oppression and suppression of the ravages of patriarchy, that will awaken them to courageously midwife the muse of the feminine and the creativity of her imagination. The freedom of this new vision embodies the potential of birthing a deeper meaning, purpose and value to all of the arts… that perhaps will liberate and release the voice of the prophetic and the vision of the mystic, through a visual language that addresses the depths of that which really concerns us all, regarding all of the challenges and crisises we are currently facing.
My husband has chosen to retire from college life at the end of this yearly term and pursue this new vision his inner muse is imaginatively and creatively inspiring within him as he courageously surrenders to being midwifed through the process of engaging with his own inner feminine and masculine… in ways that honor and respect the gifts of the artist and teacher of the arts that have been given him, to share this gift of himself, which inspires others to discover this within themselves… as a step towards mentoring others in a healthy and balanced expression of fathering and mothering the next generation.
Perhaps this is what the college has been afraid of all along, regarding all of the arts! Seems apparent to me, that this is what the ravage patriarch within all systems has been afraid of for centuries, that inherent power of creativity and the imagination within all… once freed they fear, can’t be controlled.
Jeanette, It was for me a bit painful to hear about the situation where you husband teaches. When you said that “the syllabus outline he was told he could not use the words creativity or imagination… as these weren’t academic enough”–but then you say, “However, the arts will not die out, but rather they will become smaller, privately run institutes, which is perhaps a good thing…” And I hope it is. But as bad as I feel about what has gone on at your husband’s school, what bothers me more is what Rich said in this meditation: “I feel in the work of the men whose poetry I read today a deep pessimism and fatalistic grief; and I wonder if it isn’t the masculine side of what women have experienced, the price of masculine dominance.” But then she writes, ” just as woman is becoming her own midwife, creating herself anew, so man will have to learn to gestate and give birth to his own subjectivity — something he has frequently wanted woman to do for him. . . . Women can no longer be primarily mothers and muses for men: we have our own work cut out for us…”
I thouroghly enjoy and appreciate Jeanett’s comments to Matthews essays. She sheds additional light and insight for me. Blessings.
Sadly, with gender as with so many other things, when we focus on “silos” or one thing, we tend to lose the bigger, wider, inclusive vision of, as Friar Rohr says, “Everything belongs.”
Patriarchy has been supported by women also, e.g., Margaret Thatcher and our new Supreme Court Justice. It is dangerous to us all. I think we women have our work to do, but I believe that we have a responsibility to help men as well. For a man to glory in his physical strength and appearance is not a bad thing, and it seems to me that there is sometimes a suggestion or maybe a misunderstanding of what it means to recognize and midwife the feminine within. And, of course, there are deliberate attacks holding scorn and derision–and other forms of violence–toward men who try to integrate. As Fr. Rohr and others have pointed out, our true selves are devoid of gender.
Sue, Thank you for recognizing the fact that there are some men, as you mention, who are deliberately attacked, holding scorn and derision towards men who try to integrate the masculine and the feminine.
There is no doubt that we continue to suffer the negative effects of toxic ego masculinity and toxic patriarchal cultures, as manifested by wars, poverty, racism, violence, destruction of nature by pollution, and much suffering in the world, especially by women and children… It ‘s hard to dwell on these world problems and the suffering they cause without having deep feelings of sadness and sometimes despair… Even though it’s not easy to maintain faith and courage to remain positive and loving in our daily actions hoping to have a positive effect in our world… there are several religions and spiritual persons/groups that have experienced and taught us that there are spiritual dimensions and spirit guides that channel/guide us from God’s Loving~Wisdom~Creative Power Spirit helping humanity (and our souls) to continue growing/evolving, even through different life times, to co-Create “God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven….
Damian, In view of “toxic masculinity” I say we need to look to models like those Matthew has provided for us, such as: Robert Bly, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Luther King, Jr. and even Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart. And of course do not forget Matthew’s book, THE HIDDEN SPIRITUALITY OF MEN.
It is very disturbing to read Jeanette’s account of the cancelling of Arts programs at the College where her husband teaches. Dr. Stephen Scharper of the University of Toronto was the presenter at a recent Creation Spirituality Webinar. His talk on environmental ecology, spirituality and the arts was very inspiring and gave much hope. He announced that, after years of planning and advocacy for a new program for U of T undergrads, he has finally gotten full funding. Professor Scharper himself is inspired and encouraged by his students who are very enthusiastic about remediating our home planet after the environmental devastation unleashed by centuries of toxic patriarchy.