Interfaith Understanding: Overview

Split the Labor of the Children:

A Manifesto for Interfaith Understanding, in 2 short Chapters

Overview of Two Chapters

Chapter one:

1.     Manifesto Poem

2.     Commentary on the Poem – Intentions for Bridging Communities

Chapter two:

1.     How does transformation of culture happen? How can we hold tight to our visioning and be effective in making lasting cultural transformations?

 

Chapter one: The Manifesto Poem

“Split the labor of the children”

Can I trace my fingers along the route of your pain
promise I won't tell
against the window pane
you are so insane

Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France

Into the Americas and laundry machines?
reactive revolutions
poverty versus material wealth
split the labor of the children
into factories and laboratories
you take the eyelash butterfly kisses on the cheek
I will take the tantrums and the attitude
you take the good behavior
and confused wandering looks
I will take the shame of her blood on

You take the clutter
I will take the mess
I could listen for hours
and frown at your shoelaces
because I learned on Velcro
the younger are all about TIVO

I hated waiting in line
I hated when adults watched over
to see if I would tie the laces
in correct bows

Bow Ties Don’t Matter

my election year is all about
the emancipation of the elements
the stories begin in trattorias
they begin with the Sioux
fry bread on the reservation
and poisoned water

they begin with tragedy
leathered skin and buffalo breath
they begin at the end.

you know what, my Muslim brothers?
My Christian brothers? My Buddhist Brothers?
My Jewish brothers?

Female body parts have names. Female body parts are never generic.
they have color, identity
that do not fit in a photograph or a song
or any form of media you water
her down into
for convenience, some way
to take her with you
without taking her with you
without knowing her

without touching the essence
of her, though you thought of her,
arousal was imminent.

you want to leave now, my Muslim brothers
my Christian brothers and all the other ones
who claim female bodies signify lesser beings
further away from spirit
without really touching her essence
but oh, how you explored her body.

Oh, how you explored her flesh.
And you may have thought she was
satiated. You may have thought
satisfaction occurred all around
and around you and her.

without touching her essence
with direct connection
to the ways in which she is divine
you have not even skimmed a surface
of what is possible inside
the spirit vessel
that formed
a female identity

While your Abrahamic interpretation
taints her like a dirty background to your
male perfection and absolution
paints her like a distraction
on your road to completion
sexual completion
religious completion

this is false sight my brothers
this is false teaching
my brothers
for within her is
the lamp lit for
the unspeakable types of pain in human existence
and you might not even know to look
she might not know where to point
inside, where to point inside?
anatomy is the empty shell of our skeletal mirror
it shows nothing beyond the first one or two dimensions

we are multidimensional beings
society banks on the fact that
women and certain others
do not find their worth, their light, their inherent power
their remembrance of the breath in
breath out
is what it all comes down to

we can teach more, give more, love more, laugh more
break the molds handed to us, if we are taught
how we
are not defined by the form we take
my brothers
this is the law
laid down at a beginning
we cannot grasp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commentary on Poem: Intention for Bridging Communities

 

I use this poem as a teacher of Interfaith values, because it states in no uncertain terms what the false sight and false teaching is about women.

This must be addressed in Interfaith settings due to the history and current damage done by what I have identified. This can be a very touchy and controversial topic. The claim I make is far reaching. I call on the brothers of all the mainstream faiths, and others if they will tune in. The centuries’ old painful and destructive religious mistake made over and over has sent messages out into the crowds of people that God is somehow invested in a sexist, strange gender hierarchy that men are always at the top of.

If there had been resistance to this horrifying and inaccurate message, all that resistance has essentially been stomped out, often violently and repeatedly and consistently. In place of whatever folk tales and indigenous stories that almost universally contain more gender balance than Judeo Christian and Islamic faith teachings, we have been given the map to self - destruction and daily self-desecration.

The undoing of what has been done to a huge part of the human psyche will take some real effort. I see my poem as an offering to the fates that carry us through whatever gates we may find, from this suffering world of false sight and false teaching, to a place, or to different worlds even, that render us renewed, healed, whole and overwhelmingly at peace. If I can feel this and dream it awake, I know it is just and real and possible as this current place of quite the opposite, chaos and confusion as the normal experience.