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PDF versionWriting from a company of word-loving women
Feb. 12, 2010
Participants put pen to paper at a Women Writing for (a) Change workshop. (Courtesy of Women Writing for (a) Change)
Throughout her life, Mary Pierce Brosmer’s voice has been silenced: by her blue-collar family and the 1950s Catholic church, in the schools she attended and the schools where she taught. Once, at a public poet’s workshop, she read one of her pieces about childbirth fears. “So what?” was one participant’s response. “I don’t care for mother poems,” added another.
Lesser women would have given up. But not Brosmer.
Twice in high school she was accused of plagiarism by teachers who insisted the excellent essays she turned in couldn’t have been written by her. Discouraged but not defeated, she went on to become a high school teacher herself, but her against-the-grain methods drew suspicions from administrators who went so far as to ban her chosen textbook.
Frustrated with teaching the traditional male canon of literature, she realized she had become “a female impersonator and ... a ventriloquist’s dummy, having men’s words about women put in my mouth that I in turn mouthed to my students.”
 WOMEN WRITING FOR (A) CHANGE: A GUIDE FOR CREATIVE TRANSFORMATIONBy Mary Pierce Brosmer Published by Sorin Books, $15.95 |
Those painful experiences inspired Brosmer to dedicate her life to encouraging women’s voices, believing that women’s words “about our lives as women” can heal and transform — not only women themselves, but also the social fabric and even the planet.
Since 1991, Brosmer has run a school called Women Writing for (a) Change, which teaches collaborative writing as a creative, therapeutic and spiritual practice through semester-long classes, weekend retreats and one-day workshops. Begun in a Cincinnati living room, it now has affiliates in eight states. The school also has given birth to a foundation to support its work, the Feminist Leadership Academy to move its feminine model into other places and careers, an online radio show, special courses for young women and girls, a consulting service, and now this book.
In Women Writing for (a) Change, Brosmer shares the story of the school, her own trajectory of transformation through writing and a how-to for creating “containers” for reflective writing for individuals or groups (with a smattering of tips for teachers of any kind). The 30-page appendix alone includes a sample organizational chart, class agendas, exercises, code of ethics and glossary, among other tools.
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It’s too much for one book, really, and in the introduction Brosmer preemptively defends the book’s structure, which she admits weaves a number of threads. The inclusion of poetry and prose along with letters, e-mails and journal entries works, but I fear some readers will get lost in the parts of the book not of interest to them.
The strongest threads are her argument for the power of unleashing women’s voices and the instructions for doing that through reflective writing. She cites the connection between women’s depression and women’s sense of their words having little effect on their listeners. “I have come to believe that women’s words, about our lives as women, are least likely to get a fair hearing,” Brosmer writes (emphases hers).
Later, Brosmer says that she believes “that more violence is done by not telling the stories than by telling them.”
She isn’t concerned about keeping any of the school’s trade secrets and freely shares the processes, rituals and exercises that have worked through the years and those that haven’t. Her themes echo the wisdom of other women’s groups (including a women’s spirituality center in Chicago where I was a board member for years): the importance of a supportive, nonjudgmental circle of women; the need for attending to the process not just the product; the expectation of criticism from the dominant, male-dominated culture.
Some complained that the processes at the school were too touchy feely or New Age. But Brosmer defends the importance of ritual for creating space for reverence, even though rituals as simple as passing a “talking stone” or writing a few thoughts on 3x5 “soul cards” have prompted cries of “cult.”
As a journalist always trying to craft the perfect lead to my article, I’m sensitive to beginnings of stories. Unfortunately, this one gets bogged down in details about the school’s history and some “foundational” stories about Brosmer’s childhood that would have worked better woven into later chapters.
More about Brosmer’s own personal story (including her “chosen exile” from the institutional church) probably warrants a separate book. It is my hope and bet that she will write one, despite admitting that she never longed to be published in the conventional sense
“I longed to be heard,” she writes. “I longed for the company of other truth-telling women. My longing has been met, for I have created for and with others a deep, loyal-to-ourselves-and-one-another company of truth-telling, word-loving women.”
Silenced, no more.
[Heidi Schlumpf is the author of While We Wait: Spiritual and Practical Advice for Those Trying to Adopt (ACTA Publications).]
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Writing from a company of word-loving women
For your weekend enjoyment, we present women writers reflecting on women who write. Women Writing for (a) Change Contours of the daily and domestic Ethnic bias is no longer an option How the remotely possible could become real |
NOT coming soon to a library
NOT coming soon to a library or theatre near you:
http://www.zenit.org/article-28294?l=english
What does this have to do
What does this have to do with an article about women writers? Women writers do not consist of either merely feminist or non-feminist. Please do not see women writers from this narrow, dualist perspective! They are just as varied and unique as the many voices of men writers in existence.
and your point is...?
and your point is...?
The Remotely Possible? How
The Remotely Possible? How about this one.Let us accept, just for the sake of avoiding a knee jerk rejection that women cannot become priests. But they certainly ought to have more respect and more power in the Catholic Church. Surely within the church, no women are actually revered and respected than the heads of the great feminine orders the Dominican nuns, the Maryknoll sisters, the Ursulines etc etc . I would bet lots of money that no devout Catholic, male or female, hs even heard of these people who weild power year after year over large numbers of women, and wh no doubt feel that mixture of love and exasperation for their male counterparts, as I suppose most women feel for their well-meaning but inept husbands.
It may be a mad idea, but if I was pope, I would call for an indepth and secret assessment of each of these women, choosing my informants very carefully. I would make some sort of excuse to meet them (eg over some scandal or other - no large order would be really free of these) and then I would make a short list of say 10 and make my own selection and then have a consistory of cardinals - ostensibly for another purpose - and reveal my purpose to create all or at least 8 as cardinals - warning said cardinals not to let the cat out of the bag until a formal announcement is made.
Cardinals do not have any "legal" powers, except that of electing a new pope. But of course they do form a body of highly informed people who head various papal bodies. Each would of course have to move away from her order and would be given sux months to arrange for a successor.
The purpose would be to train these women in the responsibilities of great power, and of course to serve notice on the church as a whole that women do deserve real recognition.
Possible? Perhaps by the next pope.....But surely all cardinals must be aware of the problem and MAYBE there exists someone like dear John 23 who had the courageous foresight to call Vatican 2.
In 1977 I made a retreat in
In 1977 I made a retreat in which some women gave the homilies. What a different and refreshing take they gave me on theology. I have heard very few woman preachers since. What a loss for the spiritual life and vigor of the church that women preachers are not a regular part of our worship.
Fr. Alan Phillip, C.P.
Another Suggestion &
Another Suggestion & Recommendation
A few years back while I was working in the library at Saint Paul School of Thelogy, I came across a book by one of my favorite authors. But this book knocked my socks off! The title of this "life-changing" tome is, Couldn't Keep It To Myself: Wally Lamb And The Women of York Correctional Institution - Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters. The author is Wally Lamb (other works include: She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True). Unlike Lamb's other wonderful works of fiction, the subject matter of this book (project)is totally true and totally engaging. Lamb got a grant and a permission to conduct a writing workshop in York Prison. He shares with us the voices of the women there and let's them speak for themselves and HOW they speak. Lives of abuse, PTSD, unwanted pregnancies, poverty, etc. are interwoven with the poignancy and general "messiness" of the quotidian tragedy that we call daily life. The work is incredible and reminded me in a visceral way how we discount the stories these women need and must tell. I was primarily shocked out of my ignorance by how DAMN good these tales were. I almost felt like a voyeur by being allowed such an intimate and priviledged look into the lives of women who are unusually intelligent, compassionate, and extremely real! As Lamb's title implies, these women want to be heard, to tell their stories, to speak truth to the assumptions we have of them. Many sociologists have noted the irony of the growing phenomenon of the "feminization of poverty". If this interests or concerns you, grab this book and read it slowly and reflectively - you will not be disappointed.
PS: I also recommend Kabul Beauty School by Rodriguez. Happy reading mes amis.
Rick Folker in KC
I attended a retreat in 1977
I attended a retreat in 1977 and for the first time listened to women preaching. It was refreshing to hear theological insights from a female point of view. Since then there have been few occasions to experience that again. What a loss to the church not to have a complete sprituality preached on Sundays, but to continually hear the spoken word only the male perspective. I encourage people like Mary Pierce Brosmer to at least provide us their written wisdom.
Fr. Alan Phillip, C.P.
Thank you for your
Thank you for your encouragement, Fr. Alan! We need more men to speak out for justice on behalf of their sisters in Christ.
I applaud Ms Brosmer for her
I applaud Ms Brosmer for her courage and persistence in speaking truth to authority. The critical circumstances of the global community require that she and the women of the world speak and act to reverse the cultural misdirection of male domination. Global humanity suffers from the immorality of "Religion’s Conspiracy of Ignorance."
Humankind is distinguished from other animals in its capacity to judge morally and take moral action. The difference between moral behavior and immoral behavior is knowledge (scientia) and the ability to know right and wrong, and to choose what is right over what is wrong. Knowledge, morality is about knowing causes.
It is in the knowledge of causes that human consciousness can choose to take actions that have beneficial affects and avoid actions that are damaging and destructive. The overarching moral crisis of our time is cultural failure to pursue knowledge and to pursue the talent of moral choosing with respect to relationships with nature. Ignorance and the failure of moral conscience are consequences of obstinate, arrogant fixations in misinformed, Old World beliefs. Cultist religion fixated in ignorance survives in modern time.
Obsessed in the dualism of separated realms of the divine and the satanic, religions hold to the dualism of spirit and matter, and the belief that the spiritual is the realm of the divine, and the material is the realm of the satanic, which is basically scripted in the theology of the First Vatican Council.
Science informs modern consciousness in the evolution of original cosmic energy, that is, in manifestations of wave/ particle correlations and the continuity development of atoms, molecules and living creatures. All matter is the elaboration of cosmic energy, and, the energetic dispositions of matter constitute what is called the “soul” of matter. The whole cosmos is of common origin from first energy. The realm of nature wholly belongs to the realm of the cosmos. Matter isn’t the realm of evil opposing spiritual (energy) the realm of good, as humans have surmised. God pronounced all creation “good.”
The schism between spirit and matter, between soul and body, particularly as advanced in religious cults, thrives in the irrationality of religious ignorance. The evolution of science is evolved knowledge, and from evolved knowledge, the ascendancy of morality. But, morality is only ascendant when knowledge is intentionally engaged in making moral choices; specifically, for example, we now know (should know) how unleashed corporate exploitation is destroying nature, aborting life and hastening the day and depth of eco-social destruction and collapse—what is "the culture of death."
The fate of nature is an issue and venue where science, religion and politics necessarily interface. Failure to correlate and integrate them in updated knowledge is to cause them to function in divided and destructive frames of mind. Immoral corporate greed fights moral constraints on its exploitation of nature. Corporate self-interest justification spills into religion and polical (im)morality. Self aggrandizing interests close their ears and minds to talk of air pollution and environmental destruction caused by industrial/ technological wastes.
Except for morality, there is no civility, there is no religion, and there is no hopeful future for humankind. The “justified life” is a moral life, life that is tested by proof of knowledge. The untested life, the life in which ignorance and arrogance are allowed to drive human conduct is dead-ended. Even animals that live by laws of the jungle, that is, by symbiosis and survival of the fittest, behave more benignly toward nature than does humankind who possess higher intelligence. Humankind should act in support of natural symbiosis, that is, by the sensitivity of humanism, and beyond humanism, by the altruism of Eucharistic sensitivity. The way of salvation for all life depends on Eucharistic altruism. Christian theology has not yet been applied to human living. The havoc of immoral human willfulness is written large in nature: “CHANGE OR PERISH”, live by moral restraint, or perish.
THE CULT OF “FIDEISM” IS THE CULT OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE, THE CULT OF WILLFUL IMMORALITY. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS, EVEN TODAY, ACT IN IGNORANCE OF AND IN DENIAL OF NATURE IN CONCERT WITH CORPORATE MINDLESSNESS, NOTWITHSTANDING AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE; IN THIS WAY RELIGIONS BEHAVE GODLESSLY, CULPABLY.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?grpId=3659174697239231&articleI...
Mary Pierce Brosmer is really
Mary Pierce Brosmer is really an inspiring writer, she has the personality and that is adorable. Despite of her painful experiences, she decided to continue her passion in writing and use it with a purpose. Painful experience turned inspiration--really amazing.
Her pieces either an essay, poem or any form of composition are all designed to enlighten ones life.
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