On Saturday, I burst into tears, and have been feeling quite fragile since then. Obviously, it's about what is happening in Ukraine, but there was a specific catalyst. I have found that I have access to the British "Antiques Roadshow", a program I love, and periodically they do an episode where the back stories of one or two items are researched and explored. In this case, a 1920's-era quilt led to learning more about the life of a young Scottish woman who had been in service at a stately home. Evidently, she fell in love with the house's married chauffeur (or had sex with him under other circumstances. Who knows?) and found herself pregnant. This being 100 years ago, she had to go to a home for wayward women during her pregnancy, then, immediately after the birth, the child was given up for adoption. At that point, this young woman's family being ashamed of her, she was sent to Australia, where she eventually married a farmer in the Outback and lived the rest of her life. But she never lost her homesickness for Scotland.
The piece of the story that threw me into a state was the fact that it was her father who paid for her passage to Australia. In effect, he renounced her and never wanted to see her again. He sent her into exile half a world away. He had that power.
The story should seem dated, but it doesn't. From small scale (when I lived in the YWCA in Helena, Montana, virtually every woman was there to escape some sort of family, societal, or spousal violence or rejection) to large (one man having the power to send millions of women and children into exile), it seems like the male-female power imbalance is as toxic as ever.
I cannot help but think about one of my heroines, the feminist theologian Mary Daly, who said it very succinctly in her groundbreaking 1973 book, Beyond God the Father: "...if God is male, then the male is God." I mean, this was published nearly 50 years ago, the year I graduated from high school! Yet it seems no less radical, or obvious, now. When you think the ultimate power of the universe looks like you, you can more easily use your power to do anything you wish. We women can't begin to imagine such power; it's like an impossible dream. Speaking for myself, if I found myself "all-powerful" tomorrow, I would treat the entire city of Duluth to a huge Thanksgiving-style banquet, and then fly to England, buy a tiny cottage home, and live quietly ever after. That's it.
Amazingly enough, Mary Daly is also from Schenectady. There must be something in the Mohawk River water! She attended Catholic church and schools and went on to teach at Boston College. But (yup!) she was eventually fired from her tenured position. Her post-Christian views did not fit a Catholic college, that's for sure. Being post-Christian/monotheistic in our world is its own form of exile.
It is pretty clear that soon, there will be nothing left of the country that millions of refugees are fleeing. Their hearts and bodies are being ripped from a soil they love. Exile will always be painful, wherever they land, and ripples of pain are moving out across the globe. All because of one man who has no capacity to care about their pain, or the devastation to the earth. Other variations on this kind of dynamic are playing out all over the world. Talk about paradigms that we have totally outgrown.
