From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service 2002

All this year, as a Church we have chosen to focus the healing energy of these services on the issue of peace.  We have talked in various ways about war and peace in the world at large as a reflection of war and peace in our individual lives.  In today’s sermon, I would like to talk about what is for many of us the greatest war that we experience in our lives, even though it is sometimes so huge for us, so all-encompassing, that we forget we are in the middle of it.

Unless you are a member of the military, or some other war-related industry or profession, you are probably not exposed to the ravages of physical combat.  But there is one war that is ongoing, one war that is waged in all nations and all cultures, and among all races on the face of the earth on a daily basis, one war that can be funny at times, approached by some people in good humor and can also be horrific and hard to laugh about, and everything in-between–and that is the war between the sexes.

The war between the sexes has been around as long as human beings have been on the planet.   I would say that it began with Adam and Eve, except that according to some religious traditions, there was a woman named Lilith, who proceeded Eve, but got in trouble with Adam and/or God the Father, because she was not acting in the approved feminine way.  So we might say that the gender wars even predated the couple that are considered by many to be the ancestors of us all.  In any case, as long as spirit has been incorporated into physical matter on Planet Earth, there have been problems and dissension among the ranks in regards to the gender differences between bodies.

On a physical level, there is not much difference between genders, certainly not enough to justify the controversy.  These days, in this country at least, we mostly acknowledge at least some of the time that almost everything about the human experience is universal in nature, including our physicality.  It is said that there are only two activities in the world that are gender-specific.  Only men can contribute sperm.  And only women can bear children.    Apart from these activities, everything we feel, everything we think, every choice we make, can be felt or thought or chosen by the individual involved, whether they happen to be male or female.

On an energy level, there is one very small but far-reaching difference between genders, and that is the placement of the first chakra.  The first chakra is that powerful energy center that contains much of our information about physicality.  The majority of everything about how we relate to our individual bodies as well as the body that we call the Planet Earth, is connected to or is stored in the first chakra.

In men, this chakra is physically much closer to the Planet, and is greatly affected by gravity and the other forces associated with the Planet.  When we talk about men having heavier energy and women having lighter energy, when we talk about men being more caught up with the earth, and women being more focused on the heavens, when we say that Men are from Mars and women from Venus, when we notice that men are more interested in self or creating a separate space, and women more interested in others or creating relationship connections, all we are doing is noticing the differences in perspective that come depending on where the first chakra is located.  If the first chakra were in the same place in both male and female bodies, these differences in perspective would not exist.

So why, do you ask, is there is difference in the placement of the first chakra?  What is the purpose to this, in the larger scheme of things?  The reason for the difference in placement of this spiritual center, as well as the reason for the differences in gender of the human body is the same:  it’s all about creativity.  It’s all about creativity.

We are spirit, and as spirit, we are a part, an aspect of the Creative Force of the Universe.  There is a reason why God is often referred to as the Creator.  The existence that is sometimes labeled “God” is pure, unadulterated, conscious Creativity.  And we are here on this planet of substance and mass, to learn to be the children of God, to learn how to create through physical matter.

Creativity at its most basic, can be broken down into dual energies that in eastern traditions are called “yin,” and “yang.”  In our part of the world these energies are sometimes called “the male principal” or “male energy” and “the female principal” or “female energy.”  These are the basic building blocks of all creation.  This is the ebb and flow of life as it manifests itself.  When male energy, the active part of the cycle of life, unites with female energy, the receptive part of the cycle of life, creativity is born.

On the physical level, when a male body unites with a female body, a new life is possible.  We all know this.  What we tend to forget, unless we have formed the habit of looking beyond the physical, is that each of us is male and female energy.  Since everything in the physical ultimately arises from the spiritual, each one of us is composed of male and female energy, regardless of the gender of our body.  And everything about our lives is an interchange, a dialogue of sorts, between these two forces in ourselves.  That dialogue can be a harmonious chorus, a spirited debate, a silent standoff, an outright screaming match, whatever but it is always an interchange of some kind.

On the energy level, when the male part of any individual’s energy system unites with the female part of that individual’s energy system, creativity is possible.  When an artist produces an object of beauty or a musician plays an enjoyable melody, they are using their male and female energy in concert, to create the object or experience that is pleasant to see or hear.  When a miner extracts coal from the earth or a baker makes loaves of bread or a doctor takes care of injured persons, they are using their male and female energies to create a synergy within them that allows healing to happen outside of them.  At every point, we create our individual lives, and we use our male and female energy to do so.  And at every point, we choose whether these parts of us will work together, complement each other, support each other; or whether our male and female energies will be at war.

Unfortunately, one can tell from the state of the world at large, what we call around here the consensus reality, that there are a lot of us making choices that have us at war with ourselves.  Everywhere around us are individual men who are brutalizing the women in their lives in order to try to get themselves to notice that they have brutalized their own female energy.  And everywhere around us there are individual women who psychically, psychologically and emotionally manipulate and/or dominate the men in their lives because they cannot allow their own male energy to act on their behalf, and therefore, attempt to force others to act for them.

To complicate the equation, we have created whole societies in which those in female bodies this time around spend their time engaged in power struggles with those in male bodies, and vice versa, just because we are unwilling or unable to ground and work through our own space.  When we need the other gender to complete what is missing in us, then we create dependency, as well as resentment of the object of our dependency.  So then we have centuries of experiences on Planet Earth of relationships between men and women that are based on scarcity or lack, and are compounded by bitterness and blame of the other gender for that lack.

The good news, folks, is that the times, they are truly changing.  It is the time when the male and female is scheduled to come together.  Everywhere around us we are seeing the mirror images of the vast changes that are being made in human consciousness.  We have female astronauts, welders, and body builders, and male nurses, nannies, and househusbands.  We have whole societies who are making major shifts of consciousness, virtually overnight.

One such that occurred recently with little media attention, happened in Afghanistan when the women of the country decided to oust the patriarchal Taliban leadership, and quietly convinced their Afghanistani husbands to take this action with evident success.  The United States might like to take the credit for the radical transformation of the political structure there, but the real success story is about those spiritual beings in both male and female bodies who live in the area who were determined to move the next step for them towards a greater honoring of the feminine.  Granted, there will likely be a kick-back of sorts.  Humans typically resist change.  We can expect that the patriarchs of Afghanistani culture will not give up without many, many more battles, but the game of change is on.

And now, in this country, we are coming up to the end of the cycle that has lasted almost 3,000 years, as we shift from a rationally-driven male-energy-based technological society, to one in which intuitively-based female-energy leads the way.  In this brand new cycle, the male and female energy in each of us will be honored but the female principle in both men and women is moving into the leadership position of our individual and collective soul.  Throughout history, certain forward-thinking individuals all over the world have made this necessary shift, but I predict that the United States may very well be the first society that will embrace the balancing of male and female, under the leadership of the female.

It is the time.  It is indeed the time.  It is the time for each of us to make peace with our self by the simple act of acknowledging, running, and balancing in our own space, our own female and male energies.

Do you truly desire peace in the world?  Then find your male and female energies.  Find yours, not your mother’s or father’s, your wife or husband’s or even your children’s.  Find yours.  Find the messages that your female energy gives you every day through your dreams, or your “random thoughts,” or in your meditations, that precious guidance that your female energy gives you each and every day, if you but listen.  Give your male energy permission to act on that guidance, don’t put it in the front and let it charge forward on its own initiate, recklessly and impulsively.    Rather, give your male energy full permission to carry out your dreams, to organize your thoughts, and bring into the physical things from the desire of your soul.  When enough of us choose this level of unity, war in the world at large will no longer be a reality.

I’d like to end my sermon today with the words of the Master. Jesus of Nazareth knew everything about balancing his male and his female energy, although his words on this subject were arguably the most edited aspect of the New Testament.  I’d like to read you from the Gospel of Thomas, a book that did not make it into the Christian Bible, despite the fact that many biblical scholars consider it to be the book that is the most historically accurate record of the words of the Christ.

In this passage, Jesus is asked by his apostles for more information about finding the Kingdom of God.  He gives them these words:

When you make the two one,

          And when you make the inside like the outside,

                   and the outside like the inside,

          And the above like the below,

          And when you make the male and the female one and the same,

                   so that the male not be male nor the female female,

          Then will you enter the kingdom. 

The growing pains involved ending the gender wars are potentially enormous, but so are the rewards awaiting us by this unity.  Hopefully we can all weather the upcoming skirmishes in good humor, helping each other as we go, knowing full well that in the end, we will all return to God, the Creator.

Copyright 2002 by Rev. Resa Eileen Raven