An Easter Prayer for the Rising Up of the Girl Child by Julie & Emily Nielsen

An Easter Prayer for the Girl Child

May girls everywhere have the opportunity and tools to live a full and healthy life...  

In the spirit of Easter, may the Girl Child continue to rise up around the world from anything that diminishes Her, body, mind & spirit...

As Christians, let us commit to fully enlist the full resurrection power of the Gospel to support the rising up of the Girl Child around the world...

As we follow Christ beyond Easter, let us be in the habit of continually dying to and letting go of anything that makes Her vulnerable to forces which seek to harm, diminish, and thwart her resurrection power... 

Let us celebrate Her amazing flight... 

Let us stand in awe of Her vulnerable, yet unthwart-able power and see in her rising up the resurrection power of Christ in our world... 

In the name of Christ, may She stretch her wings and fly and grace our world with the healing in her wings. Amen

the butterfly is a sacred symbol from nature which captures the easter spirit... 

An inspiring article about how the rising up of the Girl Child is leading our world...

“Girl power is one of global development’s most potent weapons against poverty.” http://skollworldforum.org/2013/03/28/global-change-starts-with-girls/

GLOBAL CHANGE STARTS WITH GIRLS

KATHY CALVIN 
President and CEO, United Nations Foundation

 

 

   

    

 

 

Published in Partnership with Forbes

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• A healthy, educated, empowered adolescent girl has the unique potential to break the cycle of poverty.
• While girls have the potential to change the world, in many places they often don’t have the chance.
• We can help end poverty by vastly ramping up our efforts to protect and empower adolescent girls.

We are just wrapping up Women’s History Month, which has generated a much-needed dialogue on the contributions of women to society, but an important piece of the conversation has been missing – the contributions of adolescent girls around the world.

Girl power is one of global development’s most potent weapons against poverty.

A healthy, educated, empowered adolescent girl has the unique potential to break the cycle of poverty.  She is likely to have fewer and healthier children and earn higher wages to support her family and drive economic growth. All of this promotes more productive and stable communities and countries – enhancing global prosperity and security and benefiting us all.

But here’s the challenge: while girls have the potential to change the world, in many places they often don’t have the chance.

Millions of adolescent girls are forced to marry young, drop out of school, and carry the burden of household chores – depriving them of educational and economic opportunities.  They are at risk of physical and sexual abuse.  And they are often denied the right and tools to plan their families.  An adolescent girl doesn’t always get to decide if and when she becomes pregnant – but a girl under 15 is five times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth complications than a woman in her 20s.

Once condemned to the shadows, these injustices are starting to get the attention they deserve.  A growing movement – including the UN Foundation and its Girl Up campaign, the Nike Foundation, UN agencies, and others – has demanded a place for girls on the global agenda.  Girls themselves have started demanding a seat at the table too.

The result: the start of a global revolution to recognize the rights of girls and to realize their promise.

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals established in 2000 provided a number of concrete goals for the international community to mobilize around, and we have made real progress in the last 15 years.  This includes virtual parity between boys and girls in primary education and significant drops in child and maternal mortality.

“Girl power is one of global development’s most potent weapons against poverty.”

Policies are also beginning to catch up.  In December, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution on ending female genital mutilation, and in March, the Commission on the Status of Women ended its annual session by adopting strongly agreed conclusions to prevent and end violence against girls and women.

Additionally, as part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to girls, President Obama recently signed into law the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which includes new provisions to make ending child marriage in developing countries an official foreign policy priority of the U.S. government.

All of this is evidence that the international community can achieve meaningful progress when we come together.  So what still needs to be done to make sure girls everywhere are empowered?

First, we need better data about girls and whether and how development programs reach them.

Second, we need to take programs that work to scale and increase investments in girls.

Third, we have to overturn laws and policies that discriminate against girls and pass – and enforce – ones that protect their rights.

Next, we need to increase educational and economic opportunities for adolescent girls, especially in technology.

Another critical step we must take is ending child marriage.  This effort must be coupled with a strong push to expand access to voluntary family planning information and services for girls.  Ninety percent of first births for girls under 18 happen within marriage.  As Maria Eitel of the Nike Foundation said last year, “This isn’t an issue of promiscuity. … If she’s married, she needs access to family planning.”

The fact is: all adolescent girls have the right to quality reproductive health information and care.  This shouldn’t be treated as a controversial issue; it should be treated as a human rights issue.

The world is at a crossroads and what we do, or fail to do, has enormous consequences.  The international community can stick with the status quo, which deprives millions of girls of their rights, and harms global health, economic growth, and the environment – or we can help end poverty by vastly ramping up our efforts to protect and empower adolescent girls.  Right now, discussions are underway about what comes after the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.  We must seize this opportunity to explicitly prioritize girls in the post-2015 framework.

If we want to drive progress in the world, we need to put girls in the driver’s seat. We know how to make that happen, but we need the collective will to do it.  Each of us can speak up, raise awareness, support organizations, or do something to make girls’ causes our cause.  And together with girls around the world, we can create a brighter future for all of us.

The Cost of 'Perverted' Preaching by Lynne Hybels

Lynne Hybels is a peace activist/advocate for global engagement at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. She is the author of Nice Girls Don’t Change the World and helped produce Hope and Action, a DVD and participant guide that introduces churches and small groups to first steps in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Lynne and her husband, Bill, have two adult children and two grandchildren.

http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/04/cost-perverted-preaching

THE DEATH OF a college student who had been gang-raped in Delhi provoked outrage and anger. More than 2 million Indian students joined a movement to protest the rising violence against women in India. According to official data, reported cases of rape have more than doubled in the past 20 years, and women are the victims of a high proportion of other violent crimes.

Congolese surgeon and activist Monique Kapamba Yangoy (courtesy of Christine Anderson)

But there's another side to this story. "Almost as shocking as the Delhi gang rape has been the range of voices that have sounded after it," wrote Sagarika Ghose, a TV journalist and commentator. "Patriarchy is chillingly omnipresent." Rather than blaming those who attack women, leaders in some Indian villages blame Westernization, liberal consumerism, growing individualism, or even the women themselves—because they wear "skimpy clothes," talk on mobile phones, and work outside the home, according to South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper.

For 19-year-old Kanika Sharma, these leaders miss the point. "It is all about the mentality of the boys," Sharma told the Mail & Guardian. "They think because they are men, they can do anything. But girls should get equal rights and opportunities."  Sharma speaks while standing under a sign that says:Being a woman should not make you feel vulnerable. But sadly, throughout the world women do feel vulnerable.

Before I traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—described as the "rape capital" of the world—I studied reports on rape as a weapon of war. In the DRC rebel soldiers have brutally raped thousands of women. They know that if they rape enough women and girls, they can destroy the social fabric of an entire community.

But in the DRC I discovered something worse than rape as a weapon of war. I discovered an underlying culture of rape in which violating women sexually has become normalized, accepted. In this extremely patriarchal society, boys are taught that being a man means dominating women. Rapists are congratulated on being "man enough" to "take a woman."

Congolese surgeon Monique Kapamba Yangoy explained that the DRC has laws prohibiting men from having sex with girls under 18, but they're not enforced. It is not uncommon for girls as young as fifth grade to ensure "success" in school by having sex with their teachers. University students who demand that their professors wear condoms when they have sex with them tend to get lower grades than girls who don't demand condoms. Women are often asked to have sex with potential employers before they can get a job.

Perhaps the deepest problem, suggests Dr. Yangoy, is that women in such cultures are conditioned to believe they truly are of little value. So they lose the will to fight back, to stand up for themselves, to expect just and loving treatment.

In the DRC, as in many countries, churches have often reinforced this perspective by preaching a perverted message of female submission. Women are to submit, period. No one mentions that men are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church—even to the point of giving his life for his beloved. No one mentions the concept of mutual submission.

But in the DRC that is beginning to change. One reason I work with World Relief Congo is that it actively works toward the slow but sustainable transformation of cultural attitudes toward gender and sex. I sat with Congolese church leaders as Dr. Yangoy challenged them as a woman, a doctor, and a Christian to use their positions of power to protect and empower women and girls.

Recently, at a gathering of women leaders from around the world, I joined women from many faiths in denouncing the actions of those who wrongly use our sacred texts and belief systems to degrade women. Together we agreed to give our voices, our money, and our time to the people, organizations, and cultural movements that honor rather than degrade women. Please join me—for the sake of every woman in India, in the DRC, and in your community and mine.

Lynne Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, is author of Nice Girls Don't Change the World.

Confronting tensions, real & imagined, & realizing potentials. By Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where she leads the Center's program on Religion and Global Development. After a long career in the development field, including several leadership positions at the World Bank, Marshall moved to Georgetown in 2006, where she also serves as a Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Service. She helped to create and now serves as the Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.

http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/katherine-marshall

Over my lifetime (certainly not just my career) the causes of social justice and our responsibilities to act to serve them have taken on growing importance for me. More and more, I see relationships between women and men as vital. Now a visiting professor at Georgetown University and leader of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, a tiny but dynamic NGO, the bulk of my working life was spent at the World Bank, always in front line operations centered on on Africa, Latin America, and East Asia and pushing boundaries for women as a leader. For over a decade my focus has been faith and development: what does religion have to do with the challenges and what does that mean for action?  At this intersection no issue is as important as relationships between women and men.

Let me begin with an odd parallel. I hope that it will begin a conversation that we can continue.

My international development career began at a time when relationships between women and men were pretty clearly defined: the World Bank I first encountered in 1968 employed men and women but the men were at the top, the women secretaries or poorly paid research assistants. It was a man’s world. The times were changing. An international organization like the World Bank buffeted laggeda bit behind but nonetheless was changing also, so a young idealist like me found a somewhat uneasy welcome. There were rules that now seem hilarious on skirt length, and far more important doubts as to whether a woman could travel to far off places or be trusted to speak to a senior government official.

Feisty people, almost all women, challenged these patterns and gradually change came. A few women like me broke through break glass ceilings. The willful ignoring of the complex roles that women played in social change gave way to rather timid exploration.

In those early discussions the tone of discussions about women’s issues was qualitatively different from those on other development topics (say livestock strategies, railway car procurement). Voice tones changed. Men shied away from discussions unless someone very senior compelled them to participate. Over time we saw dramatic change and today no self-respecting development specialist would gainsay the assumption that women’s roles must be examined and that gender equality is a sine qua non for a just and successful society. Whether they act sincerely and effectively on these assumptions is a topic for another day.

Around 1999 a new topic entered World Bank discussions: religion and faith. As the World Bank’s president, James D. Wolfensohn, presented the case, it seemed obvious: most people in the world are motivated by religion and religious institutions have an ancient history on virtually any development topic. But the worlds were far apart, as far apart and alien as women and development seemed in the early explorations. It was a rocky start, still painful and rarely given priority. Slowly, very slowly, the worlds are finding ways to move ahead. But it’s an astonishingly difficult journey.

The odd parallel is that both topics, gender and development, evoke strong emotional reactions that often derail honest, productive discussion and analysis. It’s important to explore why. And, if my hypothesis is correct, the reasons relate not only to the nature of the very topics, gender and religion, taken separately, but to the ways in which they are related.

People care deeply about relationships between women and men. It affects everyone, in their lives each day, from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep. It’s about how they live, how their family functions, who they love and how, who they fight with, what they honor, and what they disdain. Most people come to these relationships with inherited assumptions and rules and these often have roots, complex but deep, in their religious beliefs and training.

Equality and equity between men and women (not the same thing but a topic for another day) is no simple matter. It is truly revolutionary. To my mind nothing is more powerful than an equal partnership of love and respect but for many a more traditional ordering or relationships is a desirable norm, even if that’s not admitted. Such debates are rarely joined but they are critical to the concerns of this Liberty Bell conversation.

My own conclusion is that no topic is as important, both for development and for religion, as relations between women and men. It’s about daily life (food and laundry) but also about the most fundamental core of life philosophies. What do love, respect, freedom, and justice mean, as lived in every day life as well as for societies? Love thy neighbor as thyself: what does that mean within a family? A community? If a girl is blocked in her dreams, told she can only follow certain paths, must obey and not lead, what does that mean for human freedom and the right to dignity, even to life?

Equality is not easy. It means huge change that touches every aspect of life. It’s perhaps the only thing that affects everyone, every human being. We need to recognize this and talk about the real challenges that are involved because they demand honesty and a willingness to confront sensitive topics and nagging worries. We need the probing insights of all disciplines, theology included but also economics, psychology, and engineering. The conversation about women and religious traditions, for example patriarchal traditions, teachings about families, about caring, sexuality, joy, cultural similarities and differences, all need more focus.

Topping the lists of topics to tackle for me are the horrors of domestic violence, investing in young children, and hearing women’s voices loud and clear in every setting, from peace negotiations to divorce law. But that’s only a start. Every issue we face has a dimension of faith and religion. And every topic has a gender dimension. As we explore the intersections we can move far ahead with fresh insights and wisdom. If we bury the issues or fall for simplistic or rhetorical formulas we may find ourselves stuck in a bog.

To be continued.

Helping Women Live to Their Fullest Potential by Dara Pearson

http://ignitingchange08.blogspot.com/2013/03/dara-pearson-helping-women-live-to.html

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Dara Pearson: Helping Women Live To Their Fullest Potential Posted: 15 Mar 2013 06:00 AM PDT By Dara Pearson I was raised in the Unification Church, a fundamentalist, patriarchal religion in which women had no voice and no power. My parents had an arranged marriage, and my sisters and I were to have the same. I remember being a kid and having a tenacious loyalty to the church because it was everything that I knew. But I also had an ongoing feeling of dread that I held the same fate as my mother, who seemed flatly sad and empty most of the time. Although it was incredibly confusing, I remember promising myself that my future would hold something different, something bigger, although I didn’t know exactly what. I now work with battered women at a shelter for domestic and sexual violence. In many ways, they are the same women that I grew up with. The church covered up the emotional, physical, financial, sexual and spiritual control of women in much the same way that they covered up tax evasion and an elite financial empire. In many ways, it feels like home, to witness women on the edges of male dominance and exploitation. But this time, it’s different. I get to be a part of changing that, part of helping women access safety, find their voices, and develop the idea that they can strive for more and live to their fullest potential. And it’s truly rewarding work because each hour of each day is spent looking for ways to improve the quality of life for women and their children, whether it’s through higher education; employment opportunity; sustainable affordable housing; establishing supportive, quality relationships; helping women access reliable child care; or establishing the fundamentals of physical and emotional safety. Sometimes we come full circle to find that the most fulfilling life is about giving what we ourselves have been blessed enough to find.

Thank you Emily & Julie! by Helen LaKelly Hunt

Helen LaKelly Hunt has been active within the Women’s Movement for over twenty-five years. She is founder of The Sister Fund, a private women’s fund dedicated to the social, political, economic, and spiritual empowerment of women and girls and Women Moving Millions, an initiative to mobilize unprecedented resources to girls & women around the globe. Helen has worked in behalf of other women’s organizations, and is honored to be an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, in Seneca Falls, New York. 

Emily Nielsen Jones is making a tremendous contribution by highlighting those entities where women have a more important spiritual status and those where women are somewhat derivative.  I grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition.  I know the courage it takes to speak out.

In my church, all the deacons were male and of course, women are not allowed to be ministers.  For all the years I attended church, the only people who were allowed to pray publicly were men.  Visiting the church as an adult, the wives can now go up as the husband prays from the pulpit.  But only to stand behind him and in silence.  Women cannot even offer public prayer in the church. 

This sends a subtle, but profoundly, disempowering powerful message to women throughout the church. 

How wonderful that Emily and her sister Julie are speaking up!  May this message be heard throughout our culture and a transformation happen around gender roles in a rapid way.  God bless Emily and Julie!

Helen LaKelly Hunt

Praying with Women of the Wall

Standing in solidarity with Women of the Wall (http://womenofthewall.org.il/) and all women of faith who simply seek to lean in fully to our faith traditions and also affirm our own fundamental human equality as women.

http://forward.com/articles/172711/american-jews-launch-protests-for-womens-right-to/

Prayer for Women of the Wall

by Rahel Sharon Jaskow

May it be Your will, our God and God of our mothers and fathers, to bless this prayer group and all who pray within it: them, their families and all that is theirs, together with all the women and girls of your people Israel. Strengthen us and direct our hearts to serve You in truth, reverence and love. May our prayer be desirable and acceptable to You like the prayers of our holy mothers, Sarah, Rivka, Rahel and Leah. May our song ascend to Your Glorious Throne in holiness and purity, like the songs of Miriam the Prophet, Devorah the Judge, and Hannah in Shilo, and may it be pleasing to you as a sweet savor and fine incense.

And for our sisters, all the women and girls of your people Israel: let us merit to see their joy and hear their voices raised before You in song and praise. May no woman or girl be silenced ever again among Your people Israel or in all the world. God of justice, let us merit to see justice and salvation soon, for the sanctification of Your name and the repair of Your world, as it is written: Zion will hear and be glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice, over Your judgments, O God. And it is written: For Zion’s sake I will not be still and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be silent, until her righteousness shines forth like a great light and her salvation like a flaming torch.

For Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. Amen, selah.

תפילה לנשות הכותל

מאת רחל שרון יסקוב

יהי רצון מלפניך, ה’ אלהינו ואלהי אמותינו ואבותינו, שתברך את קבוצת התפילה הזאת ואת כל קבוצות המתפללת בה, הן ומשפחותיהן וכל אשר להן, ואת כל קבוצות התפילה לנשים ואת כל נשות ובנות עמך בית ישראל.  חיזק את ידינו וכוון את לבנו לעבדך באמת, ביראה ובאהבה.  אנא תהא תפילתנו רצויה ומקובלת לפניך תפילות אמותינו הקדושות שרה, רבקקה, רחל ולאה.  תעלה שירתנו לפני כסא כבודך בקדושה ובטהרה כשירת מרים הנביאה, דבורה השופטת, וחנה בשילה, ותערב לפניך כרית ניחוח וכקטורת הסמים.

ועל אחיותנו, כל נשות ובנות עמך בית ישראל, זכנו לראות בשמחתן ולשמוע את קולותיהן בשירות, זמירות ותשבחות לפניך, ולא תושתק עוד אשה או בת בעמך ישראל או בכל העולם כולו.  אלהי משפט, זכנו למשפט צדק וישועה בקרוב, לקידוש שמך וליקון עולמך, ככתוב: “שמעה ותשמח ציון ותגלנה בנות יהודה למען משפטיך, ה’”.  וככתוב: ”למען ציון לא אחשה ולמען ירושלים לא אשקוט עד יצא כתגה צדקה וישועתה כלפיד יבער”.

כי מציון תצא תורה ודבר ה’ מירושלים.  אמן, סלה.

The Women's Liberty Bell Blog... by Harville Hendrix

Harville Hendrix, Ph. D. is a Clinical Pastoral Counselor who is known internationally for his work with couples. He and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. cocreated Imago Relationship Therapy and developed the concept of “conscious partnership.” Their partnership and collaboration has resulted in nine books on intimate relationships and parenting. Harville holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and Theology from the University of Chicago and has received an honorary doctorate and two distinguished service awards. For more information about Helen & Harville's latest book Making Marriage Simple: http://www.harvillehendrix.com/index.php

I am so impressed with the efforts Emily Nielsen Jones is making to bring to light ways in the Christian world that women are written about in a secondary way.  I have studied marriages for 40 years. My experiences as clinician, theorist and author, document to me that if the husband and wife in a marriage replicate a dominator-subordinator model, where the husband is given greater esteem and the wife is in some sort of secondary role, it’s much harder for the marriage to thrive and their children to thrive.  There is no safety in a context within equality.  Healthy marriages are ones where mutual regard, mutual respect, shared responsibility and equality characterize daily living.

This conversation should not even be occurring at this time, when women are receiving so much respect in other sectors of the culture.

In my view, the fact that this conversation is occurring is a tragedy and challenge that needs to be taken on.  The conversation should be brought to an end with the full honoring of women’s status as human beings and their contributions to the culture.  It is a commitment to the ethic of equality that will keep marriages and homes a place where everyone, every member can thrive and prosper.

Harville Hendrix