Tristy

“Patriarchy polarized human beings by gender and endowed each gender with certain roles and properties so that neither could experience full humanness.”
― Nelle Morton, The journey is home

“…To seek out, to study, to immerse oneself in, surround oneself with, beauty; to be conscious of one’s dependence upon those who create it or, like the performing musician, re-create it. Very little matters apart from this.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

“Sally Gearhart once gave me the phrase 'a word we cannot yet speak.' While we were not at the time thinking in terms of spirit or spiritual, we agreed that women are having emotions, visions, experiences that no words in the patriarchal language can describe. I want to posit the possibility that there is a word, that there are many words, awaiting woman speech. And perhaps there is a word that has not yet come to sound - a word that once we begin to speak will round out and create deeper experiences for us and put us in touch with sources of power, energy of which we are just beginning to be aware.”
― Nelle Morton, The journey is home

“...spirit was wrenched from its organic origins, separated from the body - the mother {woman} and the goddess - the mother Earth or Earth Goddess. The new manifestation of spirit, projected in hierarchical terms, emanated from the father in whom the 'spirit of life' as sperm was ejected as minuscule baby into the womb {viewed as nutrient value only}. The father as reflected in early patriarchal mythology and later patriarchal science was believed the sole parent. The cosmic dimension of the same movement ripped spirit from its earth people origin and placed it above the people, in the sky as originating in an all-powerful Father - or male God. In patriarchal religious ritual spirit came to be owned and controlled as property in the one and same manner as women were owned. Patriarchs usurped the exclusive right to define, interpret, and evoke the spirit out of their experience and project it onto women and children, as they deemed that women and children 'should' experience it. The moving verb 'transcending' {synonymous with breath and spirit} changed to a static noun, 'transcendence,' separated from the body and woman. The hierarchical direction assumed ultimacy - 'down from up above' instead of the former direction of 'up from down under.”
― Nelle Morton, The journey is home