Spent all day today in meetings, one right after the other. Good meetings, strong meetings, merry meetings.
Yesterday, however, was a day of traveling and thinking and scheming.
It began in Cleveland, in the rain. I woke in a shabby but comfortable motel room to a sound I hadn’t heard in months–heavy rain, with wind. I had been up pretty late and morning was not quite a gleam so my waking brain didn’t quite ken what the noise was. It was still dark out but peering out the window, I smiled to watch water falling from the actual sky. Imagine that–water from the sky.
I called for a cab to take me to the airport, showered and did the last of the packing. I dashed over to the motel office to check on something and the clerk offered to walk me back to my room with an umbrella. I laughed and allowed as how I’d dance nekkid in the rain, if I wasn’t in a city Not My Own. Heaven knows, the old West End of Asheville has experienced by nekkid pale self under a full Moon or under a downpour. But Cleveland is not my village and I restrained myself, as was polite and suitable.
I arrived early to the airport–which is my preference–and breezed through check-in and screening, only to be thwarted in the actual leaving. There was a maintenance issue with our plane and that dragged on and on, until they reassigned most of the other passengers. Only a handful of us would go on to Dulles on the original flight, whenever that managed to happen. If my connecting flight was missed, I could look forward to a five hour layover in the perfectly horrible Dulles and an arrival time back home around 9pm.
O bother.
When the flight finally left, it had only a few folks on it so there was snack mix and diet Coke for everyone! In abundance! United was at least consistent. The first flight was delayed by a couple of hours and–et voila!–the connecting flight to Greenville was also delayed. So it all worked out. And it gave me time to ponder this whole Kick It Down/Destroy the Patriarchy thing that many of us keep talking about but don’t seem to have the ability to speak it into being. We’ll need to find some other strategies if we’re going to achieve this Very Important Goal.
I took out my trusty Composition notebook and started making lists and diagrams and doodles, and shaping what was churning around in my head. In witchcraft, as in life, intention is terribly important, and it’s vital to be specific if you need a specific outcome. So “Kick It Down” can be a hashtag but isn’t really a strategy.
We can start with definitions.
What is patriarchy and what don’t we like about it? What do we want changed and what do we want to have in its place?
Can we start locally, in conjunction with like-minded groups in other localities, and target the patriarchal systems in our own families, in our lives, in our city and county governments? Microcosm, macrocosm.
Can we look at the strategies that have made patriarchal systems resilient and successful and use them to tear down the masters’ house or must we have new tools for old systems? Or is it, as I always suspect, a third way of utilizing all available tools and resources to achieve the end results?
As I and others develop these concepts, I will share them here, in case any of it is useful to you in your community. Each day, we begin anew. We pray for strength and resilience and courage and endurance. And, please, Mother! some humor and music and dancing, too.