ADVANCE PRAISE for

URGENT MESSAGE from MOTHER

Mom says: clean your room. What do Gloria Steinem and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have in common? They're both listening to an urgent message from Mother Earth, as are a host of others who are singing the praises of Bolen's latest book

—Utne

Bolen provides the tools for women to lead the world away from the perils of patriarchy and toward life-sustaining change.

—Ode

The Mother has sent an urgent message. Are you ready to answer the call?

—Spirituality & Health

This is the most inspiring and optimistic book I've read in years. It tells how women working together can bring us peace and save the planet. Jean Shinoda Bolen invites us all to join the next, most powerful wave of the women's movement. Count me in!

—Isabel Allende, author of Zorro,

The House of the Spirits, and Paula

Jean Shinoda Bolen shows us how the cult of masculinity is endangering us all. Women and men are equally human and fallible but at least women don't have our masculinity to prove—and that alone may make us the main saviors of this fragile Spaceship Earth.

—Gloria Steinem, cofounder of Ms. magazine

and the Ms. Foundation for Women

"Jean Shinoda Bolen's Urgent Message from Mother is a book whose time has come. Our earth home and all forms of life in it are at grave risk. We men have had our turn and made a proper mess of things. We need women to save us. I pray that many will read Bolen's work and be inspired then to act appropriately. Time is running out."

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize,

Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa

"Jean Shinoda Bolen's Urgent Message from Mother aims at a day that is coming but has not arrived. A day when religions will not be exclusively patriarchal, when makers of war will first ask questions which mothers ask, when societies will measure success factoring in the health of our planet as of the first order! This book emboldens readers by referring to ancient wisdom that has been muted and by aspiring to a way of living in the future that includes the feminine genius. Obviously the critical matter of garnering and wielding responsible power must be addressed. Bolen takes beginning steps in that direction; more will follow, no doubt. But Urgent Message from Mother moves our attention upward to a time of needed fundamental change in the way people of this world think and act. It is a foundational book and a strong one."

—The Right Reverend William E. Swing, Episcopal Bishop of

California and President of the United Religions Initiative

"Jean Shinoda Bolen's potent Urgent Message from Mother has the empowerment to be the right catalyst for the right time. This book will most certainly motivate women to gather together to be spiritually uplifted and to bring to the world the love and peace that are so sadly lacking in the world we see today."

—Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., founder, Center for Attitudinal Healing

"There has been a major change in the world since the end of World War II. While many problems still affect humanity, the Earth, our Mother, has become priority number one. Jean Shinoda Bolen's Urgent Message from Mother comes as a true blessing. May it receive a wide audience and have a profound impact."

—Dr. Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General of the United

Nations and winner of the 1989 UNESCO Peace Education Prize

An inspiring call to action, powered by real examples of how women can save the world.

—Gloria Feldt, author of The War on Choice: The Right-Wing

Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back and

former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

"Jean takes feminist spirituality to the next level—collective activism. Urgent Message from Mother is a timely and critical call for a new wave of feminism that will inspire and galvanize women and girls everywhere via interlaced circles. Urgent Message tells us that our circles are the mechanism for positive change and healing in a world of fear and fundamentalism. Since women were the first democracy builders, gathering in circles since the beginning of time, we understand the invisible power of the conscious circle as the polar opposite of hierarchy. I applaud Jean's call to action!"

—Marilyn Fowler, President of the Women's Intercultural Network

and State Coordinator of the California Women's Agenda

OTHER BOOKS BY JEAN SHINODA BOLEN

The Tao of Psychology

Goddesses in Everywoman

Gods in Everyman

Crossing to Avalon

Close to the Bone

Ring of Power

The Millionth Circle

Goddesses in Older Women

Crones Don't Whine

First published in 2005 by Conari Press,

an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright © 2005 Jean Shinoda Bolen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bolen, Jean Shinoda.

Urgent message from mother : gather the women, save the world / Jean Shinoda Bolen.

     p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57324-353-7 (alk. paper)

1. Women—Psychology. 2. Women—Social networks. 3. Women political activists. I. Title.

HQ1206.B555 2005

305.4—dc22

2005011828

Typeset in Minion by Kathleen Wilson Fivel

Printed in the United States of America

MV

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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CONTENTS

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Introduction

1 ·  Mother's Day

2 ·  Mother Earth/Mother Goddess

3 ·  Monotheism/Doing without Mother

4 ·  Mother Needs You!

5 ·  Antidote 1: The Visible Power of Women Together

6 ·  Antidote 2: The Invisible Power of Women's Circles

7 ·  Anything We Love Can Be Saved

Acknowledgments

Discussion Guide and Circle Experience

Chapter Resources

Index

DEDICATION

For my daughter Melody Jean Bolen

and

my son Andre Joseph Bolen

(February 16, 1972–June 4, 2001)

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

HEEDING THE URGENT MESSAGE FROM MOTHER

In the short period between the initial 2005 publication of Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World and this paperback edition, there have been many hopeful signs and good people that encourage me to continue to be a message carrier. I find that those who are heeding a Message from Mother are motivated by love for whatever it is that needs to be nourished, protected, or saved. It's advocacy, caretaking, or outrage at indifference or abuse of power. These people are putting their efforts into saving the life and well-being of a particular vulnerable living thing or thing of beauty or into saving the world.

My optimism was given a boost when Global Warming went mainstream in the time between the hardcover and soft-cover editions. A tipping point was reached—and as if, overnight—global warming was an idea whose time had come. An infectious idea causes widespread changes in perception and behavior when a critical number of people adopt it. Green is now commercial. Hybrid cars are hot. Yet long before a movement surfaces or a resisted idea becomes accepted, innumerable individuals had to commit themselves to do something they felt called to do. Think of Al Gore before the documentary and the Nobel Prize, taking his power-point slide show around, a figure of ridicule to the powerbrokers. He was like all the many others who believe in the importance of what they are doing in the absence of evidence that it is making a difference. It is necessary for many, many people to do grassroots grunt work until a tipping point is reached. This is the hundredth monkey or millionth circle principle, and how what was once not done, not believed, or unthinkable becomes what most people accept as reality.

In this same period between the hardcover edition and this one, the tenth anniversary edition of another one of my books, Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey, was published. I see strong parallels between how a person responds to a cancer diagnosis and what people do in response to dire news about what is happening in their world or the world. Some patients give up and expect the worst prognosis as inevitable. Most accept that those in authority are the experts and leave it up to them. Then there is a significant minority who are exceptional. They act on the belief that they can make a difference in the outcome and seek information, second and third opinions, and look into alternatives. They may do inner work, find support groups and make major changes in how they live. Exceptional patients do whatever they believe will help them get well.

People who become advocates for good causes are exceptional in similar ways. Most non-governmental organizations are formed by such people. The proliferation of NGOs in the past decade is amazing: they doubled in the United States to over a million, grew from none to speak of to several hundred thousand in China and Russia. India now has a half million NGOs.

Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote, Our earth home and all forms of life in it are at grave risk. We men have had our turn and made a proper mess of things. We need women to save us. Some recognition of this may be reflected in the increasing number of countries that have women heads of state: there were twenty-one in 2007.

Women are the empathic gender, which doesn't mean every woman, but it does mean that women collectively have this as a distinguishing quality. Empathy is the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. It is the foundation upon which moral decisions are made. In chapter 4, "Mother Needs You!," I describe characteristic qualities that women have (as do exceptional men). The point is that these talents are needed now.

In 2006, research on the female brain got widespread media attention and was the subject of a best-selling book. These studies found that there are four parts of the brain that are usually larger and more active in women than men. These parts have to do with self control, patience, intuition, empathy, ability to weigh options, worry, and emotional memory.

The message contained in this book's subtitle, Gather the Women, Save the World, is about the need for women to participate in peacemaking at every level and has to do with feminism, spiritual activism, mother power, women in circles with a sacred center, and three to the nineteenth power. If three women heed the message and if they tell three other women, there would be nine. If each of them then spread the word to three others, there would be twenty-seven. If each of these twenty-seven passed this along to three of their friends, there would be eighty-one. If these eighty-one women talked to three others, in just four steps—there would be 243. In nineteen steps—three to the nineteenth power—this idea would reach over a billion women (1,162, 261,467).

This is how geometrical progression works, this is how a virus spreads and becomes an epidemic, this how consciousness-raising groups became the women's movement. This is how a call to gather the women could bring women together in villages, cities, in corporations, in governing bodies everywhere, to do whatever it is that is their assignment from Mother.

Full equality between men and women is one of the most important prerequisites for peace. Without full equality, there is injustice and the promotion of harmful attitudes in boys and men which is carried from the schoolyard and family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations. Without full equality, qualities associated with women are suppressed in boys and men.

I believe that a 5th United Nations–sponsored international women's conference would be a giant step toward a tipping point—in terms of numbers attending, connections made, and a ripple effect. Only a U.N.–sponsored conference would allow women to attend who otherwise would not be able to get visas and support from their countries. Women would share information about what has worked, they would find role models, mentors, and allies. They would learn from each other and connect with kindred spirits.

The principle that women's rights are human rights and the Twelve Critical Areas of Concern that constitute the Beijing Platform for Action were the accomplishments of the 4th U.N. International Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Half the NGOs that exist now were not in existence in 1995. Each of the Twelve Areas could be a conference within the conference, bringing together those who are working on finding solutions for similar needs.

For there to be a 5th women's conference, we need to create grassroots advocacy for this in the countries that belong to the United Nations and at the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings. This is the reason for the website www.5wwc.org and big blue 5WWC buttons, for 5th Women's World Conference.

On November 21, 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a draft resolution on The Right to Food by a