Women in Conversation

Northern air blows in a cold and tumultuous day in New Mexico. I take out a bag of sweaters from my old pine amoire and pull on a new pair of boots to take my dog, Belle, out for a walk.  I think about the poet, Mary Oliver all morning after listening to a superb interview she did with Krista Tippet for On Being in 2015. She has passed away and yet, hearing her recorded voice, calms my heart and so I listen to the podcast two mornings in a row.  

During the months of quarantine, I am blessed to be in a small chat room conversation with another extraordinary woman, South African, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.  She is a politician/activist who was South Africa's Deputy Minister of Defence from 1999 to April 2004 and then, Deputy Minister of Health until August 2007.  She speaks about the healing work she has done to develop the belief that change is possible.

In my mind, these two women are in conversation, one, the poet, Mary Oliver together with the activist, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. I listen closely. Oliver asks, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge shares with her, her amazing life story.  She begins to study medicine and then, becomes a very different sort of medicine woman. Not the kind that goes to medical school, a different type.  She will tell Mary Oliver how she endured a year in solitary confinement after three arrests for political activism in the 1980s. And later, how she comes to be a strong leader in part because as a practicing Quaker, she accepts that God is in everyone.  This is key to the transition post-apartheid in South Africa and must be key in the United States if we are to evolve beyond racism: God is in everyone. She would tell Mary that she is the first Black woman, South African Quaker, and pacifist to serve as Deputy Minister of Defence. 

Madlala-Routledge, elected to Parliment in 1994, and inspired by her pacifist beliefs was appointed the Deputy Minister of Defense five years later. She came to raise the consciousness of the country, "if you want peace, you must prepare for peace". She is a fierce example of what we need in order to redirect the world toward equality for all. 

Mary Oliver and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge speak in the poetics of action about how grace can happen when we focus on the exercise of ending sentences with peaceful resolutions. When we stand up for women and girls who suffer because of the imbalance of power between genders, people of color and whites, and the inequalities of wealth, then at least we are speaking truth. Madlala-Routledge has done much difficult work.  She has campaigned to end sex-trafficking of women in South Africa and continues to be a healing voice for her country. She worked to change the HIV/AIDS denial to a national emergency when she took on the position of Deputy Minister of Health in 2004.*  She is one of the wise women in the world leading us to see the importance of consciousness and to holding ourselves to high standards.   

Yes, God is in everyone, every person, every child is of God.  Will we really get that in our heart of hearts? I wonder each day of this most unusual time if we will awaken to a higher vibration?  

May 29, 2021

Months of quarantine have passed and we are now, it would seem, on the side of new potential. A fragile egg has cracked to reveal the birth of something. When the mother bird sings to her babies, what will this new form become?  Change is possible, (I know it is) I hope when we speak of change, it will be for the betterment of all.

A Thousand Mornings

All night my heart makes its way

however it can over the rough ground

of uncertainties, but only until night

meets and then is overwhelmed by

morning, the light deepening, the

wind easing and just waiting, as I

too wait (and when have I ever been

disappointed?) for the redbird to sing.

~Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

* Founder and Executive Director of Embrace Dignity, a non-profit campaigning for legal reform to abolish the exploitive system of prostitution and support South African women wanting to exit the sex industry.