Many thanks to Jean Shinoda Bolen for allowing FPN to post her wise words:
Warm Holiday Greetings and Information Regarding 5WWCI want to share the Preface to the softcover edition of “Heeding the Urgent Message From Mother” which will be out sometime this Spring because it puts my advocacy for a 5th UN Women’s World Conference in the context of recent events and also introduces the Mother’s Day efforts of Standing Women. I hope it re-activates and inspires you to do whatever it is that is yours to do to make a difference. With the sponsorship of the Women’s Intercultural Network & California Women’s Agenda (WIN-CAWA) and the co-sponsorship of Women’s World Summit Foundation (WWSF) Geneva, Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE) and Pathways to Peace, I’ve submitted a proposal for a panel at the UN CSW NGO meetings in February 2008.
Envisioning a 5th UN Women’s World Conference (5WWC) Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. Magazine (confirmed), Alice Walker, noted author and activist (invited, not confirmed), Elahe Amani, Chair WIN-CAWA (confirmed) and Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., author and Jungian analyst (confirmed) in a conversational circle discussion about the potential of a 5th UN Women’s World Conference, the first since Beijing in 1995. They will draw upon their experiences, intuition, perceptions and dreams to envision the transformative potential of a 21st century international women’s conference. It is intended to be a conversation that will flow spontaneously to inspire ideas, questions, thoughts and action in members of the audience. Intent is to generate grassroots and NGO activism for a 5WWC to implement gender equality, shift priorities and affect how financial resources are spent.
Love and peace, Jean
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Preface: Heeding the Urgent Message From Mother
(softcover edition)
=======================================================In the short period between the initial publication of “Urgent Message From Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World” in 2005 and this softcover edition, there have been many hopeful signs and good people that encourage me to continue to be a message carrier. I find that those who are heeding a Message From Mother are motivated by love for whatever it is that needs to be nourished, protected or saved. It’s advocacy, caretaking or outrage at indifference or abuse of power. They are putting their efforts into saving the life and well-being of a particular vulnerable living thing or thing of beauty or about saving the world.
My optimism was given a boost when Global Warming went mainstream in the time between the hardcover and softcover editions. A tipping point was reached and–as if, overnight–global warming was an idea whose time had come. An infectious idea causes widespread changes in perception and behavior when a critical number of people adopt it. Green is now commercial. Hybrid cars are hot. Yet long before a movement surfaces or a resisted idea becomes accepted, innumerable individuals had to commit themselves to do something they felt called to do. Think of Al Gore before the documentary and the Nobel Prize, taking his power-point slide show around, a figure of ridicule to the powerbrokers. He was like all the many others who believe in the importance of what they are doing in the absence of evidence that it is making a difference. It is necessary for many, many people to do grassroots grunt work until a tipping point is reached. This is the hundredth monkey or millionth circle principle, and how what was once not done, not believed, or unthinkable becomes what most people accept as reality.
In this same period between the hardcover edition and this one, the tenth anniversary edition of another one of my books, Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey, was published. I see strong parallels between how a person responds to a cancer diagnosis, and what people do in response to dire news about what is happening in their world or the world. Some patients give up and expect the worst prognosis as inevitable. Most accept that those in authority are the experts and leave it up to them. Then there is a significant minority who are exceptional. They act on the belief that they can make a difference in the outcome and seek information, second and third opinions, and look into alternatives. They may do inner work, find support groups and make major changes in how they live. Exceptional patients do whatever they believe will help them get well.
People who become advocates for good causes are exceptional in similar ways. Most non-governmental organizations are formed by such people. The proliferation of NGOs in the past decade is amazing: they doubled in the United States to over a million, grew from none to speak of to several hundred thousand in China and Russia. India now has a half a million NGOs.
Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “Our earth home and all forms of life in it are at grave risk. We men have had our turn and made a proper mess of things. We need women to save us.” Some recognition of this may be reflected in the increasing number of countries that have women heads of state: there were twenty-one in 2007.
Women are the empathic gender, which doesn’t mean every woman, but it does mean that women collectively have this as a distinguishing quality. Empathy is the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. It is the foundation upon which moral decisions are made. In Chapter 4, “Mother Needs You!” I describe characteristic qualities that women have (as do exceptional men). The point is that these talents are needed now. In 2006, research on the female brain got widespread media attention and was the subject of a best-selling book. These studies found that there are four parts of the brain that are usually larger and more active in women than men. These parts have to do with self control, patience, intuition, empathy, ability to weigh options, worry, and emotional memory.
The message “Gather the Women, Save the World” is about the need for women to participate in peacemaking at every level and has to do with feminism, spiritual activism, mother power, women in circles with a sacred center, and three to the nineteenth power. If three women heed the message and if they tell three other women, there would be nine. If each of them then spread the word to three others, there would be twenty-seven. If each of these twenty-seven, passed this along to three of their friends, there would be eighty-one. If these eighty-one women talked to three others, in just four steps there would be 243. In nineteen steps–three to the nineteenth power–this idea would reach over a billion women (1,162, 261,467). This is how geometrical progression works, this is how a virus spreads and becomes an epidemic, this how consciousness-raising groups became the women’s movement. This is how a call to gather the women could bring women together in villages, cities, in corporations, in governing bodies everywhere, to do whatever it is that is their assignment from Mother.
I believe that a 5th United Nations sponsored international women’s conference would be a giant step toward a tipping point–in terms of numbers attending, connections made, and a ripple effect. Only a UN sponsored conference would allow women to attend who otherwise would not be able to get visas and support from their countries. Women would share information about what has worked, they would find role models, mentors, and allies. They would learn from each other and connect with kindred spirits. The principle that women’s rights are human rights and the Twelve Critical Areas of Concern that constitute the Beijing Platform for Action were the accomplishments of the 4th UN International Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Half the NGOs that exist now were not in existence in 1995. Each of the 12 Areas could be a conference within the conference, bringing together those who are working on finding solutions for similar needs. For there to be a 5th women’s conference, we need to create grassroots advocacy for this in the countries that belong to the United Nations and at the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings. This is the reason for the website http://5wwc.org and big blue 5WWC buttons for a 5th Women’s World Conference.
On November 21, 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a draft resolution on The Right to Food by a recorded vote of 176 in favor to 1 against (the United States) stating that it is intolerable that more than 6 million children still die every year from hunger-related illness before their 5th birthday, further noting that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger, food insecurity and poverty, partly due to gender inequality and discrimination and that in many countries, girls are twice as likely as boys to die from malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, and that it is estimated that almost twice as many women as men suffer from malnutrition.
Women in Columbus, Ohio started a grassroots organization that is Mother-inspired in 2006. Through word of mouth and their website they encourage women to stand together on Mother’s Day and affirm:
We are standing for the world’s children and grandchildren and for the seven generations beyond them.
We dream of a world where all of our children have safe drinking water, clean air to breathe, and enough food to eat.
A world where they have access to a basic education to develop their minds and healthcare to nurture their growing bodies.
A world where they have a warm, safe and loving place to call home.
A world where they don’t live in fear of violence–in their home, in their neighborhood, in their school or in their world.
This is the world of which we dream.
This is the cause for which we stand.
This is Mother’s agenda.
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