Twirly Dresses

I grow tired very quickly of men disrespecting women and of women tearing each other down. Not a single woman deserves the poison spat at them. We learn how to hurt each other so young, too. I worked once with the Vacation Bible School program at a church in a poor rural area of Alabama. I'd been working all week prior to that on putting sheet rock up to repair the ceiling of a house and was thrilled to spend a day working with people rather than with my hands. I worked with a large group of very young girls, two of whom in particular, clung to me. We held hands and the girls took turns being carried by me. Blinded by the sparkling goodness of children and high from the empowering hand of God in my service, I sat with the girls and explained to them that since God is their Father and He is a King, then each of them is a princess. I was taken aback when one girl looked at me and said, pointing to the other little girl, "She can't be a princess. She's too fat." And I see the same meanness every day in people all around me, including myself at times. We can't let that happen. Each girl really is a princess. Each woman is lovely. We can't keep talking like this to and about one another. Instead, we should be reminding each other of our loveliness. A princess shouldn't go a single day without knowing she is a princess. 

St. Francis And The Sow

Galway Kinnel

The bud stands for all things,

even those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary 

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, 

and the sow began remembering all down her thick length
from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops 

to the spiritual curl of the tail
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths 

sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.


My Zeta Tau Alpha princess pledge sisters:)