Crêpe Night
by Josephine Laing
We had the neighbor boys over for "crepe night" the other week. We've done "pizza night," "pie night," "Thai night," we even do "bike night." It's fun. We also garden together. They've got these delicious big old 50's ranch style suburban backyards with plenty of sunshine and nothing but weeds and maybe a few stray beer cans. So we put in fruit trees and tomato plants, help them out with some pruning for kindling for their wood pile and then they can really enjoy their backyards. All this for the price of a few seeds I've saved and some autumn leaves composted with kitchen scraps along with a bare root fruit tree or two on late season sale. And students love free food. Who doesn't?
So anyway, back to crepe night. I was saying to them, "Now get in here, you need to learn how to whip up this batter and flip these crepes so you can be a Sunday morning pancake dad." After the second or third time I'd invited one of them to the stove with this suggestion, Michael said, "But Josephine, I don't want to be a Sunday morning pancake dad, I want to be an every morning pancake dad." And the rest of the gang said, "Yeah, we do too!" I smiled and laughed and said "Great!" And something about it made me deeply happy. The feeling lingered with me for several days. I didn't know why until I sat down and asked myself. And then the whole beautiful shift came tumbling down into my awareness.
These young men are engineers and mostly true to their families values, they share "conservative" political viewpoints. Now, if we take them out of the cultural decision making career environments of CEO's and legislators and put them in the family home where their hearts will have more sway than their minds, and we put their wives instead in those positions of social direction as the heads of corporations or in the political arenas, my how the world could change!
Typically women don't allow themselves to act from a truly feminine perspective until there are 50% or more women present. This is especially true in decision making capacities, thus the Condalisa Rices, the Golda Meirs, the Margaret Thatchers and even the Sarah Palins of the world. These are all examples of women who are acting out of the masculine mindset. But when women are equally represented in number, then female values are expressed. So, if all of these young men are staying at home with the kids and all these young wives begin to hold the primary wage earning careers, you can bet that social programs and clean air and clean water options, not to mention extensive parental leaves will become greater social priorities. Even the massive war machine that our culture represents might begin to take a back seat.
Joseph Campbell said that his female students at Sara Lawrence College, where he taught for many years, forced him to look at the world from the female perspective which is "What does this mean to life?" rather then our current all pervasive male perspective of "protection and acquisition." (And this male focus is, by the way, a perfectly valid and wonderful viewpoint, but only if it is equally balanced by the feminine values of considering all of life. You know, the next seven generations idea.) So, there we have it, get the women in greater numbers in positions of guiding the direction of society and give the poor guys a break and let them stay at home and open their big hearts to all the little ones and Voila! All is well!
And there they are, heading in that direction all on their own. All I had to do, to see it, was flip a few pancakes. Pretty good, eh?
© 2011 Josephine Laing
We had the neighbor boys over for "crepe night" the other week. We've done "pizza night," "pie night," "Thai night," we even do "bike night." It's fun. We also garden together. They've got these delicious big old 50's ranch style suburban backyards with plenty of sunshine and nothing but weeds and maybe a few stray beer cans. So we put in fruit trees and tomato plants, help them out with some pruning for kindling for their wood pile and then they can really enjoy their backyards. All this for the price of a few seeds I've saved and some autumn leaves composted with kitchen scraps along with a bare root fruit tree or two on late season sale. And students love free food. Who doesn't?
So anyway, back to crepe night. I was saying to them, "Now get in here, you need to learn how to whip up this batter and flip these crepes so you can be a Sunday morning pancake dad." After the second or third time I'd invited one of them to the stove with this suggestion, Michael said, "But Josephine, I don't want to be a Sunday morning pancake dad, I want to be an every morning pancake dad." And the rest of the gang said, "Yeah, we do too!" I smiled and laughed and said "Great!" And something about it made me deeply happy. The feeling lingered with me for several days. I didn't know why until I sat down and asked myself. And then the whole beautiful shift came tumbling down into my awareness.
These young men are engineers and mostly true to their families values, they share "conservative" political viewpoints. Now, if we take them out of the cultural decision making career environments of CEO's and legislators and put them in the family home where their hearts will have more sway than their minds, and we put their wives instead in those positions of social direction as the heads of corporations or in the political arenas, my how the world could change!
Typically women don't allow themselves to act from a truly feminine perspective until there are 50% or more women present. This is especially true in decision making capacities, thus the Condalisa Rices, the Golda Meirs, the Margaret Thatchers and even the Sarah Palins of the world. These are all examples of women who are acting out of the masculine mindset. But when women are equally represented in number, then female values are expressed. So, if all of these young men are staying at home with the kids and all these young wives begin to hold the primary wage earning careers, you can bet that social programs and clean air and clean water options, not to mention extensive parental leaves will become greater social priorities. Even the massive war machine that our culture represents might begin to take a back seat.
Joseph Campbell said that his female students at Sara Lawrence College, where he taught for many years, forced him to look at the world from the female perspective which is "What does this mean to life?" rather then our current all pervasive male perspective of "protection and acquisition." (And this male focus is, by the way, a perfectly valid and wonderful viewpoint, but only if it is equally balanced by the feminine values of considering all of life. You know, the next seven generations idea.) So, there we have it, get the women in greater numbers in positions of guiding the direction of society and give the poor guys a break and let them stay at home and open their big hearts to all the little ones and Voila! All is well!
And there they are, heading in that direction all on their own. All I had to do, to see it, was flip a few pancakes. Pretty good, eh?
© 2011 Josephine Laing