If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman

We’ve endured months of incessant denigration of women with this campaign cycle – both from a candidate who has no true regard for women and toward a candidate as she seeks a position of power. It’s been deeply painful to feel as a member of this collective – as a woman.

There is a lot of silver-lining awareness that comes from these extremes that allows all of us to see what still needs to be addressed and healed. This is good. And there is a lot of legislation, past and current and surely in the future, that aims to elevate women and protect them. Also good. All progress toward reaching a state of empowerment and independence. It has also heightened yet again the need to listen to and honor the words and work of Black and Indigenous women who know and see more deeply and honestly the oppressions they face.

I feel the need though for a deeper awareness of how to change our relationship with women. Another layer beyond or alongside that of outward action and legislation and awareness. It’s a layer of sacred that is most often overlooked. A layer of sacred that we as women keep hidden in ourselves for fear of it being debased, abused, misunderstood, dismissed.

But we want you to both see it and strive to understand it. To help us feel OK about feeling and showing it. We know deep down that it will change the world. We want you to realize that too and love us, it, into being.

This writing by Lisa Citore captures that sacredness. It’s a long, meaty poem with so many blazing truths and nuanced messages that it takes several, slow, thoughtful read-throughs to really really feel it. It could be its own study guide to the sacred – the sacred feminine.

(I just had a vision…Wouldn’t it be amazing if groups of men started forming to study each sentence of this writing in an effort to really truly get it? And groups of women came together to embody each line in an effort to be braver about being true to themselves? But I digress…big sigh.)

The poem is written out in its entirety below, but please feel free to visit Lisa’s website to read it again along with her other writings. FYI…she also has one entitled If You Want to Change the World, Love a Man. Let’s do that too.

If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman

If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.