Soul-Power | Authentic Voice | Archaic Knowing | Labyrinth | Inner Guidance | Connection to the Mother | Origin of Dreams
Healing Sleep | Peacemaking | Resonance with the Earth | Tribal Survival

The ancient Hebrew word for "tribe" also means "mother." The word for a clan within the tribe, batn, also means "belly."

The conjunction of these meanings is eloquent: Woman's belly establishes that we are kin. Woman's belly defines our community.

But our community—this tribe of humankind—is in deep trouble. Our survival is in question.

I've heard Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock, say that what's necessary to our survival is sacred. That makes sense. If something determines the difference between life and death, it's value is ultimate.

This is the truth as I know it: Woman's belly and the power it contains is necessary to our survival, both as individuals and as a species. Woman's belly is sacred.

In our individual lives our bellies give place to all our vital organs except lungs, heart, and brain. They contain the inner source of our life energy. They are the site of our soul-power, maintaining our connection to the Power of Being that creates, sustains, and regenerates the world. Our bellies are the basis for our survival in body, mind, and soul.

The belly's pro-creative power brings new generations into being, propelling the survival of family, clan, and tribe through time. Accordingly, cultures around the world have regarded woman's belly with veneration and awe, and also with fear and greed. They have attempted to manage, control, capture, exploit, replicate, and participate in woman's pro-creative power in many ways.

These attentions have included engravings of vulvas etched into cave walls. Spiritual practices intended to implant an immortal fetus; practices duplicating women's stages of breathing through childbirth. Myths and rites personifying the belly as goddess. Alchemy, an effort to produce an elixir of immortality in a crucible that's analog to woman's womb. The Holy Grail, the chalice of everlasting life and legends' code for Mary Magdalen and the child she carried in her womb. Currently, the development of reproductive technology that bypasses woman's womb in manufacturing—industrializing—birth.

The quest within all these efforts has been to engage the energy of regeneration that grants immortality. To find life everlasting, the fountain of eternal youthfulness, the self-generating source of life. In other words, to attain the pro-creative power implicit within woman's belly.

I imagine that our ancestors regarded woman's belly as sacred because it was obvious: Survival depended upon women's capacity to bear healthy children and live through childbirth well enough to nurture them.

Our times present many dangers to humankind's survival: war, famine, poverty, disease, injustice, and environmental destruction. Does our survival still depend upon woman's belly?

Yes. Because our pro-creative power is not just for making babies.

If we choose to use it, our pro-creative power will enable us to ensure that future generations can survive on this planet. It will provide us the wisdom to create a culture based on cooperation rather than domination. It will guide us as we generate a world of peace, justice, and ecological sustainability.

Woman, this is the time. This is the time to name and reclaim your belly's pro-creative power as sacred. This is the time to cultivate and direct this enormous, playful, deep, wise, elegant, ancient power—in whatever way you choose—for your own well-being and for the wholeness of your family, community, nation, and planet.

Imagine: What would this world be if we—you, me, women everywhere—made a bee-line straight to the soul-power concentrated in our body's center? What would this world be if we—you, me, women everywhere—directed this power to the healing we each and our tribe so dearly need?

In this final issue of Caravan Trails, I salute Paulette and her immense contribution to us all. I salute all of us who are moving, breathing, and speaking the sacredness of our bellies, our bodies, our womanhood.

May we keep dancing the wisdom and power of our bellies through our days. May the rhythm of our hips shimmy a circle of love that surrounds the earth. May we help birth this human tribe into peace and justice on this precious planet.

Soul-Power | Authentic Voice | Archaic Knowing | Labyrinth | Inner Guidance | Connection to the Mother | Origin of Dreams
Healing Sleep | Peacemaking | Resonance with the Earth | Tribal Survival

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