I would ask all of you to please consider using the song "WE ARE FEMALE" to go along with this Declaration, as they seem to go hand in hand. I am offering it as a gift to the women carrying out this work. If you want a copy please send me an email and I can arrange for you to download a copy or have one sent to you for the cost of the postage only.

Inspiration: I was inspired to write the lyrics for this song and develop this album by the figure of Tahirih-Qurratu’l-Ayn. She tore off her veil in a misogynistic climate in Iran during the 1844 period while proclaiming the full emancipation of women and the coming of a Universal Cycle of Balance.

Purpose: I present this album as a gift to humanity on the journey into harmony and balance. In overcoming centuries of oppression it is hoped that the “We Are Female” song will speak to the divinity within each woman so that she will follow her heart to recognize her true nature and become an equal participant in civilization. Hopefully this song will assist men to honour the female divine nature as well. Beautiful and talented Lina Eve helped me bring it into being.

You can listen to it and read the words at this address (power point show - best with broadband) 7 minute show.

http://tahirih-starr.org/kosmicbalance/kosmicbalance.html

Living Love, Starr*

A Woman's Creed Declaration of the Women's Global Strategy Meeting History Robin Morgan, in collaboration with Mahnaz Afkhami, Diane Faulkner, Perdita Huston, Corinne Kumar, Paola Melchiori, Sunetra Puri and Sima Wali We are female human beings poised on the edge of the new millennium. We are the majority of our species, yet we have dwelt in the shadows. We are the invisible, the illiterate, the labourers, the refugees, the poor. And we vow: *No More* We are the women who hunger - for rice, home, freedom, each other, ourselves. We are the women who thirst - for clean water and laughter, literacy, love. We have existed at all times, in every society. We have survived femicide. We have rebelled - and left clues. We are continuity, weaving future from past, logic with lyric. We are the women who stand in our sense and shout *Yes* We are the women who wear broken bones, voices, minds, hearts - but we are the women who dare whisper *No* We are the women whose souls no fundamentalist cage can contain. We are the women who refuse to permit the sowing of death in our gardens, air, rivers, seas. We are each precious, unique, necessary. We are strengthened and blessed and relieved at not having to be all the same. We are the daughters of longing. We are the mothers in labour to birth the politics of the 21st century. We are the women men warned us about. We are the women who know that all issues are ours, who will reclaim our wisdom, reinvent our tomorrow, question and redefine everything, including power. We have worked now for decades to name the details of our need, rage, hope, vision. We have broken our silence, exhausted our patience. We are weary of listing refrains on our suffering - to entertain or be simply ignored. We are done with vague words and real waiting; famished for action, dignity, joy. We intend to do more than merely endure and survive. They have tried to deny us, define us, defuse us, denounce us; to jail, enslave, exile, gas, rape, beat, burn, bury - and bore us. Yet nothing, not even the offer to save their failed system, can grasp us. For thousands of years, women have had responsibility without power - while men have had power without responsibility. We offer those men who risk being brothers a balance, a future, a hand. But with or without them, we will go on. For we are the Old Ones, the New Breed, the Natives who came first but lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the girlchild in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in ElSalvador and Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are whale-song and rainforest; the depth-wave rising huge to shatter glass power on the shore; the lost and despised who, weeping, stagger into the light. All this we are. We are intensity, energy, the people speaking - who no longer wait and who cannot be stopped. We are poised on the edge of the millennium - ruin behind us, no map before us, the taste of fear sharp on our tongues. Yet we will leap. The exercise of imagining is an act of creation. The act of creation is an exercise of will. All this is political. And possible. Bread. A clean sky. Active peace. A woman's voice singing somewhere, melody drifting like smoke from the cookfires. The army disbanded, the harvest abundant. The wound healed, the child wanted, the prisoner freed, the body's integrity honoured, the lover returned. The magical skill that reads marks into meaning. The labour equal, fair, and valued. Delight in the challenge for consensus to solve problems. No hand raised in any gesture but greeting. Secure interiors - of heart, home, land - so firm as to make secure borders irrelevant at last. And everywhere laughter, care celebration, dancing, contentment. A humble, early paradise, in the now. We will make it real, make it our own, make policy, history, peace, make it available, make mischief, a difference, love, the connections, the miracle, ready. Believe it. We are the women who will transform the world. ************************************************** This is a treasure shared in our women's circle. I pass it along for all to enjoy. The message is perfect and utterly complete. Blessed Be. ------