If anything is power, women deserve their share.

And their shares of happiness, success, love-received, peace, solitude, and so on, to go along with their standard always-in-place shares of responsibility, grief, heartache, hard work, compassion, perseverance, patience, understanding, and love-given.

dear Deepak,
Happy Birthday! I hope you are having a nice day, celebrating with your family.

imo, religion is based on beliefs, and for many this includes time-honored and cherished practices and traditions.

For myself, I think of spirituality as a way of life that is infused with all possibilities for expression and experience and for me, Love is the basis of it all.

as I am a woman,
- it is nice to be
Empowered.

All people should be,
than we really would
be
Equal.
:-)

heath, comment #1
Yes!

love,
~ Kate

"......another tradition that sees women as vessels of physical temptation."

You don't see women as vessels of physical temptation? Wheeww!! You oughta see this girl I worked with! My God....temptation in a short dress! Good thing I'm fat and ugly!

:)

Deepak,

Spirituality is certainly empowering to women. Religion on the other hand, as incredibly patriarchal as it is, is certainly not empowering.
When you mention Sarah Palin asking for God to back her run for office, doesn't Obama similarly state that he prays for spiritual guidance in his daily affairs (which would include obviously running for President). Is there a huge difference between those 2 phenomena? I am sure that in his heart of hearts, Obama believes that God is backing his candidacy. Surely if he is praying for guidance in his daily affairs he must be asking for God to back his run for office.
Sarah Palin at least adheres to her religious beliefs whereas I have not seen Obama do that. I do feel that Sarah Palin is a true Christian believer. Obama obviously is not or he wouldn't support abortion "rights".
Anyway, just my 2 sense since the topic is religion.

When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." -
-- GK Chesterton

Hey Skins, having fun yet?

Cheers,

Steve

This discussion reminds me again of the wisdom of the American Founding fathers by separating church and state.

If a person does a good job as president, and they pray, they are a good president.

If a person does a bad job as president and they pray, they are a bad president.

If a person lies, doubletalks, and does shady deals for themselves and their cronies, and they pray, they are still of questionable character.

If a person is honest, helps people as well as improving themselves, is a benefit to his community, and does not pray, he is still a high integrity person.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

For what it's worth I have lived in alternative communities where women held more positions of power and influence than the men. To be perfectly honest, they handled power about as well as the guys.

The truth, whether you like or not -I'm not going to sugar coat it - is that the lust for power has absolutely no relation to the presence or absence of the y chromosome in the person's genome.

I have seen women trip out just as bad as any guy once they cave in to thinking they have power over others.

It's ugly, whether it hides behind a male or female visage.

The question is not of empowering women, the question is one of ethics.

It is not ethical to deny people high positions just because of their gender.

And it is not ethical to abuse the trust of the people, regardless of your gender.

POW= Prisoner of War
ER = Elizabeth Rex

Steve....I am!

Does religion empower women? No, Spirit empowers women: St. Catherine to change the political and social scene for what she was otherwise unequipped, Mother Teresa to defy all the nay sayers, Joan of Arc; just to mention the few I know in the West.

I think it is because Spirit, pleasing Spirit, becomes realized, and becomes more important than all one's feminin fears, shyness, and sense of good manners.

Dear Olivia,
If we pass laws to regulate all aspects of moral behavior , thereby giving a person no choice, then we might as well be governed by a set of religious doctrines as are Iraq and Iran. We may not see our way back to a democracy, or freedom of expression, A freedom for one possibility gives rise to freedoms in other areas, the arts, innovation, literary). The notion is interconnected.

Hi Sherry,

"If we pass laws to regulate all aspects of moral behavior...."
Never said that! Never said we should regulate all aspects of moral behavior. Uphold the constitution's statement that "ALL individuals have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"--YES! I would say that!
You might want to think about what a "democracy" means to you.
Does it mean that morality should not play a role? Because I see laws around me all the time that incorporate "morality". A person can not break into a person's house and steal from them, etc. etc. etc.

That's right. I thought of that. It's the least we can do.

I read once that an Indian Chief from the 1800's looked us over and said "The reason you are so lawless is why you have so many laws."

Just another point. As far as "never having said that" , I understand, but our laws are built on precedent. Because of one decision by a judge, others can be claimed as valid. Like I said , the interconnectedness has to be given thought.

Hi Sherry,

That is an interesting quote.
You wrote "our laws are built on precedent. Because of one decision by a judge, others can be claimed as valid. Like I said, the interconnectedness has to be given thought." Sure, absolutely. I agree 100%. But I think what is important is to look at whether the initial law, the one setting precedent is valid. Look at that. Examine that.
You wrote about concern about freedom of expression. What does freedom of expression have to do with moral laws?
How does one go about removing religion from law? It is already woven throughout our system of laws. Is the law "do not steal" all that far removed from the religious law "thou shalt not steal"? I think in our hearts we know what is right and wrong. Maybe that is what that Indian chief was trying to say.

It doesn't matter if a law is valid. It matters that people enact it.

I can express foul language, and horrific vilolence through art, film, and literature. Such things may be without moralality to some. And if the some become the most, we no longer have freedom, we have someone else's idea of religion.

It is not so much removing religion from law as it is about regulating religion through law.

Yes I think the Indain Chief may have been saying "Change yourselves" ; why would one want a government to do it for you? It only creates slavery, not growth.

Ref #5

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox”.

What makes more sense is this:
“When people believe in God, they don't believe in nothing—they believe in anything”.

Your “friends” the Muslims believe in God, and so do the Jews, don’t they?

Powerful women are women who believe in themselves. When they do, they have the G-power from inside :).

G-power just means GirlPower. There is no God involved here.

We just have to re-arrange everything from inside out.

I believe and I know from experience that thinking and acting with ones full brain (both parts and not only the rational one like men are used to) does that trick.

When heart and brain work together, natural law will establish itself by itself.

No better tool than discover this than the labyrinth. It is an age old symbol that stands for what happens in the Universe on a large scale and is mirrored on our planet on a smaller scale.

Everything curls or curves back to itself. So only by knowing oneself, one is able to create and receive, exactly that what one needs, and that does not mean: that what one wants.

I have experienced the above now for more than 30 years.

But something that is a natural truth inside cannot be explained in words. So it simply is not true that words create.

Intuition, visualization and intention without any attachment create: heaven on earth :)

Sherry,

Art is not life. Life is not art. Expressing something in art is not the same as enacting it in reality. If someone writes a story, creates a novel, that novel is not reality. I think all sane people would agree with that.

“Johann Hari: Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

While we're addicted to oil, governments will put petroleum before feminism
Thursday, 23 October 2008

It's the smell I remember. Shahnaz's face – what was left of it – reeked of a day-old barbecue, left out in the rain. Her flesh was a mess of charred meat: her skin, the soft flesh of her cheeks, and the bones beneath had been burned away. Her nose was gone. Her lips hung down over her chin like melted wax. Her left eyelid couldn't close, so it watered all the time in an endless stream of tears. Shahnaz – who was 21 years old – had been punished by having acid thrown in her face. Her crime was to be a Muslim woman who wanted to be treated as equal to a man”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-dare-we-stand-up-for-muslim-women-969631.html

Believe it or not, they believe in a God.

Women in the Quran.

4:15 As for those of your women who are guilty of lewdness, call to witness four of you against them. And if they testify (to the truth of the allegation) then confine them to the houses until death take them or (until) Allah appoint for them a way (through new legislation).

My goodness, Olivia, I really was used to thinking of my library full of books, museums, and brick architecture on the 19th century bank as reality. Historians critique civilizations by it. And people try to burn books and cover a naked statue. I guess I don't get what you mean.

What I mean is people respond to anything created or expressed. They can choose to enact laws about it.

Sherry,
You are getting too "far out" with this logic. Being concerned about censorship does not mean that morality should be removed from lawmaking.

O.K.

I remember a passage from the new testament in which Jesus says to a group of women who are weeping for him, in essence, Women, do not weep for me but weep for yourselves.

Women are as much empowered in religion as men are, but according to Saint Paul in his testaments, women are still subject to men and are supposed to remain quiet in the places of worship. So there was a strange differentiation made between the sexes which is well known.

What concerns me is that I just received one of those annoying read this and pass it on to your friends notification that was called an eye-opener, and boy, was it ever, about the women suffragettes who suffered at the hands of Woodrow Wilson during their attempt to get the right to vote. This is an important piece of information which I wish I could forward to everyone here. I could only forward it to one person whose email I know and the news in this article was horrifying. Wilson had acutally wanted one ofthe suffragettes to be declared insane but the psychiatrist refused, saying that courage is often mistaken for insanity. It is a good piece reminding women everywhere of what the original suffragettes suffered at the hands of men in Virginia who actually brutalized them for demanding the right to vote. We owe it to these women to get every woman out to vote no matter what or for whom.

Women are indeed empowered by God and St. Peter predicted that even women would prophesy. It all depends upon which follower of Jesus does the talking I believe. Each one has something different to say.

God bless women everywhere and especially the men of God who protect and keep them.