I love a good conversation, full of questions and different perspectives. UU’s are so good at that, especially when it comes to a book club! I really enjoyed our first conversation about the book Conflagration by John A.Buehrens. I foresee some very deep conversations, as this book digs into the history of our spiritual ancestors and is quite relevant to the world we live in today. There’s so much to learn and be inspired by! (It’s not too late to join the book club, and if you need help getting the book, please contact me or Merrilyn Crosson. We’d love to have you.)

One thing that stuck out to me in the introduction of this book, as I read it on the day of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, was the mention of “women in troubled marriages” and the minister, James Freeman Clarke, who supported his female colleagues as they endured these troubles. I connected this to a book I had to read for my worship class this summer, March by Gerladine Brooks. The main character of March is the father of Louisa May Alcott’s “little women” and the book presents the story of his time in the Civil War. We also catch glimpses of his relationship to his wife and how a patriarchal culture penetrated even the most liberal and progressive households.

One of my assignments for my worship class was to write a letter to one of the characters of the book, to indicate to them that I understood something about them, and to ask them a question. Below is my writing for this assignment, a letter to Mrs. March, the mother of the “little women” and wife to the Rev. March.

Dear Mrs. March,

I write to you as your words continue to deeply resonate with me: “I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces.” Indeed, this is a centuries long story. I myself have let a man do to me what men have so often always done– control my temper, my emotions, and leave me in the lonely spot of feeling unheard whilst he ventures off in search of ego fulfillment. Don’t they ever know the proper place to search and the proper thing to search for?

But, as time flows on, its course persistently erodes away the edges of what once was and slowly sets a new course. Men still go off to war, but women have joined them. And the temperament of women, while not yet free to be expressed without judgement, has found its voice and is beginning to be heard. For too long, we have been left behind to pick up the pieces and now we find families in shambles, communities in battle, and our country once again at war with itself. So it is in all this that we must raise our voices and release the centuries long storm that has been brewing inside of us, passed down to us from our mothers, and from their mothers before that. Gladly, more men have heard our cry and joined our ranks, refusing to be a part of that which destroys life. The divine feminine is once again emerging, and what’s more, it’s finding its balance in human beings who refuse to give in to the divisiveness of having to choose between one force or the other- the masculine or the feminine.

But I wonder, Mrs. March, if you were free to release the storm, to really express your deepest rage, and your deepest hopes, what might you say to women in the year 2020 who still struggle with the brokenness left in the wake of men’s historic grab for land, power, and wealth? What regrets do you have of actions not taken that could have forced the river of time to dig into those hard edges with a bolder force, changing life’s course and steering it towards creation and away from destruction? How bold should we be?

In solidarity,

Ms. Norby