Free Listen Here by Sandra L. Ballard Page B

’em—
  free as they were born.
    But now, young women— now…
They've got your soul in a bind,
  wounded, wound up
in electronic wire and hard paper twine
that cut images into your brain,
unnatural images sayin’
‘Starve yourself to suit us.
Starve your body.
Starve your power.
Starve your dream—
thinner and thinner—
until YOU vanish.’
    They want you to do that
’cause if you was to take on weight
you might start throwin’ it around.
No way can They handle
a full-grown woman
with a full-grown dream. No way.”
    Listen young women,
the Grandmothers and Anorexia Bulimia
are talkin’ to you—
  Feed your body.
  Feed your soul.
  Feed your dream.
  B UST OUT !!!
   —For Judy (1966-1992)

FROM S ELU : S EEKING THE C ORN -M OTHER ’ S W ISDOM (1993)
    A Time to Reweave *
    * Note: “A Time to Reweave” and “A Time to Study Law” are excerpts from “Womanspirit in the High-Tech World,” an address given at the First National Women's Symposium, 1989, sponsored by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Northeastern State University.
    The 1990s will be the decisive decade, when humanity will either call Earth “Mother” again or perish. To survive, we must reconnect the Web of Life. People of reverent spirit everywhere are saying it: scientists, theologians, educators, artists, poets, sociologists, the man and woman next door, the kindergarten child who, when asked his greatest wish, said “I don't want to die.” It is a time to reweave, a time when women are coming into our own. As Native people often say, “The Grandmothers are coming back.”
    Whatever our ethnic, cultural or religious roots may be, women since the beginning of time have been “weavers,” weavers who work from a spiritual base. We know how to take diverse strands of life and spin them into a pattern. How to listen to the whole web at once and mend small tears that occur. If the web should be damaged beyond repair, women, like our sister the spider, know how to ingest the remaining strands and spin a new web.
    We are doing that. Consider women across the country who represent major strands of the web: women working in health, history, government, law, literature, family, holistic healing, spirituality, economics, education, art, conservation, and so on. Diverse in many ways, we are unified in our determination to ensure the continuance of life. There are men who support us in our work, as we so often support them in theirs. This cooperative trend among women and between genders is a hope for the future.
    But in the worlds society at large, people who call Earth “it” are still dominant and still rending the web at a deadly rate. Contending with them, with their disdain virus and the damage it causes, can be very wearying. That's why I've given you a corn seed for remembrance—a gift from Selu, the strong, who fed the people in body and in spirit. Although eternally giving, she brooked no disrespect, not even inappropriate curiosity (much less sexual harassment). When disrespect occurred, she quit cooking and gave the law instead. This is a principle worth pondering for women today.

FROM S ELU (1993)
    A Time to Study Law*
    As women work for the good of our people and move into positions where we help make governing policies, it is useful and strengthening to study the Creator's laws and precedents for their application. Most people now call these laws “natural.” Native people have traditionally called them “sacred.” In either case, the laws are immutable and inexorable. And they are good guides for keeping focused and centered in our efforts.
    My parents used a real spider's web, one that I could see and touch, to teach me the laws. Two that are especially appropriate for women to study are these:
    The Creator made the Web of Life and into each strand put the law to