Power

As we struggle to understand women's relationship to priesthood, we sometimes equate priesthood to motherhood.  But fatherhood is the opposite number to motherhood.  The other day I was driving home from a Relief Society discussion and the obvious hit me.  Relief Society is the equal partner to Priesthood.  

(I see your eyes rolling -- but listen . . . )

A few months ago I read Aimee Molloy's book However Long the Night, about Molly Melching and her work in Senegal.  Molly Melching was a typical late 60s-early 70s college coed who ended up in Senegal and fell in love with the people.  She began by offering literacy classes to children in the capital city, which evolved into literacy classes for women in the capital, which evolved into discussion groups on literacy, health, welfare, and human rights with village women.  These small groups were extremely successful in creating positive change. This was not a top-down kind of "There is a better way and you must change."  This was a presenter saying, "Here is some new information.  Let's discuss this and see what you all feel about it."  Great change came out of these groups. One of the things that was powerful for these women was learning about the human rights specified in the United Nations declaration.  Understanding who they were was extremely empowering to women.  In one incident a young woman went home to her wife-beating husband and explained her new understanding to him.  He reported that he only beat her because that's what his father had taught him to do but when his wife explained how things could be different they tried it and "now we have a happy home" (a paraphrase of the husband's words). 

Several of the local women presenters wanted to discuss female genital cutting, which was common practice in Senegal at the time.  Molly Melching was afraid this would be perceived as a western influence (her) trying to tell another culture that what they were doing was wrong.  The local women were insistent, however.  This was a huge problem that affected the health and well-being of girls and women.  And so a discussion about this was tried out in one village.  Eventually it spread from village to village and within a few years female cutting was largely abandoned in Senegal.  (Efforts are continuing in it and other countries.  The lessons on literacy, health and personal rights are still the bedrock with this discussion as one of the lessons.) 

That is power.  And it is a model for power that we rarely think of--the power of meeting together, caring for each other and growing as we come to understand who we are and our potential. 

As all of this change was occurring a young scholar in Britain was astounded and contacted Melching to tell her that he had just finished doing a Master's Thesis on Alice Little, who long ago visited China and fell in love with the culture.  But she was interested in knowing what foot binding was all about and why it was practiced.  With the love and interest she displayed, women began talking about the practice, reexamining it.  They started small groups called "Natural Feet Societies" and within a decade or so the practice of foot binding was finally abandoned. 

After the groups in Senegal  were having a lot of success the government decided to outlaw female cutting.  This seems like a good thing, but it was a top-down way of using power.  People rebelled against it and hardened their positions.  It really set the work back for a while until the Tostan groups were able to get their message in.  

When women in Nauvoo wanted to organize to serve their communities Joseph Smith told them God had a better plan.  I've always shuddered at the description of being organized "under the priesthood" but thinking about it now (and thinking about priesthood as God's power and not the men who deliver that power) it seems amazing. ("Under the spotlights" doesn't have a negative connotation!)   This is an organization endowed with His power that uses one of the most powerful ways of influence on the earth. If understanding your rights as defined by the United Nations is powerful, how much more powerful is understanding your potential and rights as a daughter of God, inheritor of all that He has.  It is a truly mighty power entrusted to us by God himself. Additionally, the charity that is our motto and practice is one of the most powerful forces on earth.