Call Me Brother
Call me brother if you are born of a mother Call me brother but not lightly Call me brother in mutual honor Call me brother if you will hear my challenge Call me brother if your heart breaks with mine Call me brother if you laugh and cry with me Call me brother if you know we bleed as one Call me brother if all people are your people too Call me brother if the miseries of the world crack your story open Call me brother if the soles of your feet dance in celebration of the living soil underfoot Call me brother if grief for the loss of the web of our relations opens wells of artesian sorrow within Call me brother though the names scales feathers and skin and fur of our linages differ we know our rooting is one Call me brother if you are a lover of the Sipapu of your emergence from the moist sacred wonder lying between the legs of the feminine Call me brother if you know to heal your masculine wounds you must hold in intimacy also the wounding of your fierce and tender inner feminine spirit these twins — one suckling at each nipple of your soul
Reflections: There have been many brotherhoods throughout history, not all of which I would wish to be part of. Same can be said for the spirit of sisterhoods of course too. This poem/post is inspired by the spirit of who I know we can become and be… because I know so many beautiful souls already living in such belonging. This is the great awakening and healing of our time—that we are each called to in our own way. Welcome.
And we have a long way to go.
They say it makes “the home the most likely place for a woman to be killed”.
“As we stand on the precipice, waiting for an unbalanced US Supreme court to decide the fate of women and families, history reminds us the struggle for equality is ongoing.”
“The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement;…it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”~John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869) [Thanks Randy Crutcher, brother, for these last quotes.]
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