From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: MEDITATION AND COUNTERING MALE POWER
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 08:23:07 GMT

The ACTivist, Volume 8 #9, September 1992.

The ACTivist, Ontario's peace monthly, is published by ACT for
Disarmament, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2R4,
phone 416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850, e-mail web:act. Hard copy
subscriptions are $10 for a year ($25 for institutions and funded
agencies).

Reprint freely, but please credit us (and send us a copy!)

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** Written  9:02 pm  Aug 31, 1992 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
MEDITATION AND COUNTERING MALE POWER

By Greg deGroot-Maggetti

This article is addressed to men. It has to do with justice in 
relationships with women. More specifically, it has to do with one 
aspect of such relationships: that of listening to and hearing women.

I have experienced time and again, in meetings and conversation 
where men and women are together, the tendency of men to dominate.

At the Student Christian Movement Conference in May this became 
a serious issue. For every comment by a woman during plenary sessions, 
five or six men spoke. Within an organization committed to justice, this 
is a problem. When men dominate, women's voices get drowned out.

I have read, too, of studies showing that eighty per cent of 
conversational interruptions are men interrupting women. But I don't 
need studies to reveal this. I do it myself, all too often.

The drive to talk and talk and the difficulty being silent and listening 
poses a problem for me personally as well. It creates a restlessness 
which distracts me and disrupts my powers of discernment.

Lately, I have explored the discipline of meditation. Meditation is a 
practice found in many religions. It has deep roots within Christianity 
-- although the practice has suffered through disuse in the West in 
recent centuries.

Meditation in the Christian tradition involves quieting oneself and 
opening oneself to the voice of God and the movement of the Spirit.

When I started to practice meditation I found it difficult -- I still do. 
The way of doing meditation suggested to me through things I have 
read involves setting aside time at the beginning and end of the day 
to sit in silence and focus on a centring word. The aim is to release all
 busyness and distractions; to be still.

Needless to say this involves foregoing TV or reading something that 
might seem very important. Meditation is a discipline. It requires the
 commitment to spend twenty minutes or so, two times a day, doing 
nothing. But it is only through discipline that one can develop the 
ability to be still.

What I have noticed is that when I meditate regularly my restlessness
 ceases at other times as well. I am more able to be still throughout 
the day and don't feel the need to have a comment for everything. I 
am more open to the word of God spoken both when I meditate and 
in the voices of others and in many daily experiences.

My experience leads me to wonder whether the practice of 
meditation could be a small part of the solution to male dominance.

If meditating enables me to listen more attentively and hear women 
more clearly, could it enable other men to do the same?



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