Who is My Sister?

            I’m sitting here watching the candles burning….dressed with special oils….energized with special intentions.  The flames dance sending prayers and requests upward with the smoke, out into the universe, to the Goddess.  “For my sisters and for me………”

            I remembered reading some research about intercessory prayer and healing.  1,000 heart patients were admitted to a Missouri hospital over a year period.  Half of these patients were prayed for daily by volunteers for 4 weeks.  The other half didn’t have “pray-ers” assigned to them.    None of the patients were aware of this study.  After 4 weeks it was noted that the prayed-for patients had 11% fewer complications.  That’s a small but statistically significant difference.  The medical community is finally figuring out something that spiritual people have known all along.

            “For my sisters and for me……”  I repeat this often.  But who are my sisters?  Well, I have no blood sisters, but I have my sisters in the Goddess.  These ladies are near and dear to my heart, although many of them I have never met.   Huhmm, my sisters??  I, of course, have my girl friends, some I’ve known forever, some newer friends. With some I share my deep, dark secrets, with some I share coffee and conversation.  I keep them in my prayers, yes, they’re my sisters. 

            I was reading an article about cultural differences and wound up praying for a young Afghani girl mentioned in the article.  “Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains. After crawling to her grandfather’s house, she was saved by a nearby American hospital.”  (http://www.thebestschools.org/bestschoolsblog/2011/12/03/wrong-culture-right-teacher's-surprising-discovery/)

Is this my sister?  Yes, she is!  Those women tortured and killed for being witches in Africa, are they my sisters?

            I want to cry whenever I hear girls or women putting down another woman.  I want to scream, “Don’t you get it?  If we want to survive in this world, if we want to gain power, we need to stick together; we need to support one another!”  How do we teach this to our daughters?  Society (dare I use the “p” word, patriarchy) sets us up to compete, not support, and encourages us to tear our sisters down rather than build them up. 

            We need to model respect and compassion.  We need to remember that the Earth is our mother so that makes us all sisters.  And we need to light those candles, send out positive energy, and we need to pray, “For my Sisters and for me……..”