Drums of Skin and Blood, Temples of Obstare

It is late, and the house is quiet. Rain drops like the beat of a Chinese drum. Deep and relentless; red with my blood, my mind, my heart, as I petition... And I ask, as I often ask in the moments between time, space, breath, and life: what now?

I cannot blame the majority of humankind to understand the depth of a woman's soul as it splits to welcome her babe through the portal of pleasure and pain, through her own power - when her moanings call to the spirit of her baby to enter his lungs in a newborns hark. I cannot expect it when the majority of our culture has not been granted that grace.

I cannot blame the Obstetricians, and even, at times, the midwives, who have traded their Midewiwin for mashkiki. They have replaced their hearts with their heads, their poultice for pocketbooks, and their trust with control. They have spent 4 years and more repeating that man's body is broken and are reinforced through the textbooks they are taught from. Their god is Abaddon and its image is mankind.

I cannot blame the woman who was raised to fear and loathe her body and it's functions, when she strives for man's image of perfection and falls short. Media teaches her to refuse her intuition as it is woman's folly and, instead, to prostrate herself for positions of power.

And I beat my drum...

We are a society that is so far removed from sanity and humanity that few bat an eye when organizations make threats to attempt controlling how we give life and yet we nod in stoic agreement when a boy is given the power to choose his death. I cannot blame them, but I cannot absolve either.

In it's control of the Temple of Medicine, the rule of Obstare does not allow for man to 'give' a laboring woman space and grace, time and trust. I refuse to follow the doctrine of man, and I remove myself from his temple.

We are not asking to be saved from the pain of birth, because we will loose more than the pleasure, we will loose humanity. We are not asking to be allowed to birth in our preference, for it is no longer an option.

For in this space, while pounding my rhythms on red drums of skin and blood, I realize I am not asking anymore. I will not ask, I will take. I will not wait for permission or allowance, I will expect. Humanity should expect.

We should expect for mankind to move their sluggish and dirtied knees off of the dusty floor of an archaic temple cathedral erected to man's infallibility and see that, indeed, man is fallible. In his wisdom, doctrine, and practice he has opposed humanity.

The rape of a woman's right, her child's right, to humane bearing is not a question - it is a statement. There is a movement of women who find their knees bent, no longer at the shrine of a tyrant, but at the opening to the universe.

There is a movement of women who lend their ears, not to the inveiglers whose sullied priest clothes belay their true allegiance, but to the mouths of sage feminine.

And we will swell in number and in purpose. And, in time, the priests of Abaddon will raise thier fists to haughtily crow their divine liturgy, and be met with silence. The dusty rafters will spill no power, and their instruments of worship will rust from lack of use. And Obstare will loose it's elephantine visage and reveal itself as the fallible tower of tissue and print that it is.

And I beat my drum....