Dream me, God

It’s International Women’s Day 2024, and as the many messages and posts relating to this day arrive from friends and colleagues, and through social media, let’s stop to make some space to ask ourselves: What does this mean?  What thoughts and inspirations does this day invoke? What does this day call you to do?

To give thanks for those precious strong, inspirational and nurturing women close by, that you can readily call to mind  … human beacons for Life’s journey ….

To desire to name as ‘prayer’ the many women you have come to know through their stories, and whose visible and invisible lives speak as powerfully and authentically today, imparting insights so women can continue to be agents of change, of nurturing, of ‘Just Ways’ to be, and live, and advocate for all …

To think of women today, ahead of their time who could not but step forward, and step out, and raise their heads above the parrapit, to call it out, regardless of the personal price …

To commit to stepping out, and stepping forward too, as sisters together on that essential journey for which we were called and made.  A powerful robust amplification of the legacy of Mary, whose life knew all that challenges, that with courage she addressed, full on!

Continue to dream me, God!

Recalling today the poetry and writings of Dorothee Soelle, who did not subscribe to the mainstream feminist notion that equality in the public sphere and “women’s liberation” were one and the same. She argued, “the debate over equal rights and equal opportunities overlooks to what end these rights and opportunities are used in present day society”.

She gave a glimpse of the feminism that she espouses: one that calls for a dramatic overhaul of what a society values.

“Feminism fights not only for the equality of women but also for a different culture.” Put another way, liberation feminists “do not want just an equal share of the pie as it is. They realise that they will have to bake an altogether different pie.” Her feminist convictions derive from a wider value system that prized justice and peace on a global scale.  [Strength of the Weak: 54, 82]

Giving thanks, remembering and praying today for all women (past and present) who labour, pray and live for justice and peace.

Continue to ‘Dream Me, God’!  To plant ideas and actions where they can best bear fruit.

DREAM ME, GOD by Dorothee Soelle

It’s not you who should solve my problems, God,
But I yours, God of the asylum-seekers.
It’s not you who should feed the hungry,
But I who should protect your children
From the terror of the banks and armies,
It’s not you who should make room for the refugees,
But I who should receive you,
Hardly hidden God of the desolate

You dreamed me, God,
Practicing walking upright
And learning to kneel down
More beautiful than I am now,
Happier than I dare to be
Freer than our country allows.

Don’t stop dreaming me, God.
I don’t want to stop remembering
That I am your tree,
Planted by the streams
of living water.

(Translated from the German, “Träume Mich, Gott” in das Brot der Ermutigung (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 2008).

As published in Dorothee Soelle: Mystic and Rebel by Renate Wind (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), p. 1

About Dorothee Soelle 

As a woman Soelle brought a particular perspective to both her theology and to her work for justice. She was a mystic who was also an activist, and a theologian who fitted no conventional categories. But her unique gifts made her an important spiritual-political figures in the twentieth century.  As a liberation theologian she asserted that “God is justice,” and that peace cannot develop in any other context. She  grappled with the never-ending questions that are raised by suffering: why does injustice exist? Can pain have any meaning? Why do some forms of suffering overpower us while others enrich and strengthen us? She insisted that Christians take sides with those who suffer and that they work collectively to abolish the conditions which produce it like hunger, war, oppression, violence and torture.

See also https://presentationsistersne.ie/nano-left-no-stone-unturned/

And https://presentationsistersne.ie/life-lived-on-the-razors-edge/