AN ODE TO WOMAN

AN ODE TO WOMAN


Woman, mother of the man,
And his daughter, sister,
Why are you always reviled?
Are you so sinister?

I respect the Word of God,
But I do not believe
That after creating man,
From his rib He made Eve.

He who wrote the Word of God,
He, the initial scribe,
Was certainly prejudiced
By the views of his tribe.

Yet, I believe that the scribe
Should be thanked by women.
He could have written she was
Born of toe-nail of man!

I say God is woman, in
Her image She made Eve.
To Eve man was born, is so
Natural to believe!

In the end I must say God
Could not be everywhere.
That is why She made woman
To give man love and care.


* Written in abcb, 7-6-7-6 format

*Scribes were MEN who made in hand the copies of the scriptures.


M C Gupta
10 September 2003

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NOTE:

A review and my response to it are reproduced below. These provide a relevant perspective for this poem:

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THE REVIEW—

Date: 20:08:31 09/09/2005

Your intro to this poem led me to read it, and now I have to say something, as it would be rude not to comment.

Your poem, as much as I know of poems, is well written. It had all the necessary elements of poetry and you did a fine job with that!

God, however, is not a "she" but a He, and didn't create woman to be of lower status, but different than men. We are created to be the help-mates to men, there's no shame in that, it's what God wants us to do.

Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (KJV)
Gen 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. (KJV)
Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (KJV)
Gen 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (KJV)
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (KJV)

I don't see myself as less than a man, I'm different than a man.

Thanks, and keep writing!


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MY RESPONSE—

Thanks.

Let me clarify:

1. Let us look at things from a scientific point of view, not religious dogma. [Dogma is that where there is no scope for alternative belief and discussion about acceptance or possibility of the same].

2. With that perspective, there just cannot be an authoritative word of God. When God gave that supposed word, including the utterances by and to Adam, quoted above, no languages or means of writing as known today were in existence and hence just could not have been recorded.

3. What is today believed to be the word of God was written by scribes a few centuries ago. Scribes were MEN who made in hand the copies of the scriptures, based upon their own belief system in a patriarchal male dominated society. This was given the name of God's word to put a stamp of authority on the views then prevalent in society.

4. Societies / social systems in the world have
changed and need to change and sticking to dogma comes in the way of such change.

5. The three Book Religions need to realize this fact and to let the winds of change flow in. The situation is the worst in Islam, where persistent adherence to dogma provides a breeding ground for jehad, human bombs, blasphemy laws and laws denying equality to women. It is better in Christianity, where there is more modern approach, but only at superficial level. The Vatican continues to believe and preach and actively work towards the goal of converting non-believers to believers and the present Pope has in black and white denied even to consider a possibility that there might be valid religious belief systems other than Christianity. As regards Judaism, the idea of Judaism as a great unifying factor, whereby Jews anywhere in the world were welcome and were supposed to be itching to go to Israel as citizens of their home land has taken a beating in that Indian jews who had immigrated there are finding themselves disillusioned and are telling their co-reliogionists in India not to follow suit.

6. The poem "AN ODE TO WOMAN"  refers to religion not to criticise any particular religion but to underline the fact that religion simply reflects a social belief system of a male dominated society, though it is touted as the unalterable word of god.

7. God is neither male or female. God is above gender. God is even capable of creating other gender forms [two more are known to biologists--asexual forms and hermaphrodite forms]. If there is life on other planets, which scientists believe to exist at least on 10000 more other than earth, there is no reason to believe that god would not have seeded them with other life forms, different from the bisexual, asexual and hermaphrodite ones, found on earth.

M C Gupta