The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd Page B

as my grandmother used to call it. And the flat-out truth is that we have come into a world, into a church or faith tradition, that for millennia has believed us inferior. It is a tradition permeated by an authoritarian attitude that devalues, diminishes, rejects, and limits women and the feminine.
    But seeing such truth can be dangerous. Philosopher Mary Daly reminds us, “It isn’t prudent for women to see all of this. Seeing means that everything changes: the old identifications and the old securities are gone.” 21
    The question, she says, is whether women can forgo prudence in favor of courage. That was the question that followed me as I made my way into the new year.
    Winter of Resistance
    I call the first winter of my awakening the winter of resistance. It was marked by persistent attempts to ignore the groundswell of pain and awareness that had erupted at the monastery and the new consciousness that wanted in.
    One day I pulled the slender volume Children’s Letters to God from a bookshelf and came upon this letter from a little girl named Sylvia: “Dear God, Are boys better than girls, I know you are one but try to be fair. Sylvia.” 22
    Tears floated to my eyes. Why did questions like these inhabit little girls and grown women, and when did we lose our courage to confront God with them? I threw on a coat and left the house, hoping a walk would offer diversion. Outside it was cold and bright with winter sun. I walked to a neighborhood lake, sat on the grass, and watched a flotilla of ducks glide across the water in a perfect V .
    I’d told no one about my experience at the monastery or the things it was kindling inside me. I wondered now if I should find someone trusted and pour out my experience. But did I really want to open up that hidden pocket of pain? Expressing it aloud to someone would hold me accountable to it in a whole new way, and frankly, I didn’t know yet if I wanted to own up to the wound I’d vividly uncovered.
    Mostly, I didn’t want to believe I could have been wounded by my own faith. I didn’t want to acknowledge how it had relegated half the human population to secondary status and invisible places. I didn’t want any of this to be true.
    The ground was starting to feel cold. Out on the lake, wind made scalloped patterns in the water. I drew my knees to my chin trying to muffle a throbbing space in my chest. I felt alone and unequipped for upheavals such as this. If I pursued this journey there would be so much to unravel, so much to unlearn.
    Later I would read Ursula K. Le Guin’s comment: “I am a slow unlearner. But I love my unteachers.” 23
    I, too, was a slow unlearner. The problem was I didn’t have any unteachers. I didn’t personally know anyone close at hand who’d gone through a feminist spiritual awakening. How did one do it? Did I dare step over the boundaries church and convention had drawn for women? Did I dare venture beyond the place where my mother had stopped?
    No, no, no.
    I got up from the edge of the water and walked home. It was the prudence-or-courage question again. That day I chose prudence.
    In the following weeks, I tried to ignore the monastery experience altogether, but as the days grew darker and the trees barer, it pushed unbidden into my thoughts. I could not seem to banish my awakening, so I did the next best thing. I trivialized it.
    One of the primary forms that resistance takes is trivialization. Surely I was making a big deal out of this, I began to tell myself. So maybe there is a feminine wound in me, in women, in the church, in the earth, but what about all those other major problems I should be concerned about—the environment, crime, war, homelessness? What is a little feminine wound by comparison?
    Yet the truth is, as long as one woman is dehumanized, none of us can be fully human.
    Once during that time I abandoned prudence for courage. While at a party, the subject of