Birth as an American Rite of Passage by Robbie Davis-Floyd
May 12th, 2003
Ok, it’s only one of a huge stack of books next to
my bed
my bed
So I’m reading Birth
as an American Rite of Passage by Robbie Davis-Floyd and staying up
too late every night engrossed in it. I started out doing Julia Cameron’s Artist’s
Way a few months ago and my morning pages got me reflecting on
spirituality in my life and somehow I stumbled across Carol Lee Flinder’s At
the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist
Thirst and Sue Monk Kidder’s Dance
of the Dissident Daughter and they got me questioning some of
the basic cultural assumptions about spirituality and God, but it wasn’t too
radical because as a Bahá’í I’d sort of already made peace with
the idea that God gives us a perfect religion and perfect teachers but a couple
of millenia will leave a religion subject to various kinds of corruption and
decline, and the subjugation of women could easily be one of those (notice I’m
not actually using the patriarchy word)… ok, but I’ve also been reading
obsessively about midwifery ever since my amazing experience giving birth to
Søren and a lot of what I’m reading has some critique of unnecessary
hospital procedures and this book, along with Women’s
Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Christine Northrup has me really wrestling
to figure out what basic cultural assumptions go into the practice of
conventional modern medicine, what sexism is there, what metaphors have blinded
us to truths that don’t fit into the package… I don’t know, but it’s rocking
my world a little because I’m used to trusting doctors, to saying “It’s science,
it’s objective, it’s right.” even though I have enough philosophy of science to
realize that scientific truth can change a lot faster than cultural or medical
practices. I’d still go to a cardiac surgeon if I had a heart attack, but I
feel this uncomfortable shifting of my own paradigms going on, feel like I have
a responsibility to examine the trust which I have always placed in medicine.
It’s hard to write about because I’m still reading this book and trying to
figure out what I think, and I’m grumpy that Søren is on antibiotics for
yet another ear infection and I’d love to know what standards I could use to
evaluate some of the alternatives to conventional, modern medicine…
as an American Rite of Passage by Robbie Davis-Floyd and staying up
too late every night engrossed in it. I started out doing Julia Cameron’s Artist’s
Way a few months ago and my morning pages got me reflecting on
spirituality in my life and somehow I stumbled across Carol Lee Flinder’s At
the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist
Thirst and Sue Monk Kidder’s Dance
of the Dissident Daughter and they got me questioning some of
the basic cultural assumptions about spirituality and God, but it wasn’t too
radical because as a Bahá’í I’d sort of already made peace with
the idea that God gives us a perfect religion and perfect teachers but a couple
of millenia will leave a religion subject to various kinds of corruption and
decline, and the subjugation of women could easily be one of those (notice I’m
not actually using the patriarchy word)… ok, but I’ve also been reading
obsessively about midwifery ever since my amazing experience giving birth to
Søren and a lot of what I’m reading has some critique of unnecessary
hospital procedures and this book, along with Women’s
Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Christine Northrup has me really wrestling
to figure out what basic cultural assumptions go into the practice of
conventional modern medicine, what sexism is there, what metaphors have blinded
us to truths that don’t fit into the package… I don’t know, but it’s rocking
my world a little because I’m used to trusting doctors, to saying “It’s science,
it’s objective, it’s right.” even though I have enough philosophy of science to
realize that scientific truth can change a lot faster than cultural or medical
practices. I’d still go to a cardiac surgeon if I had a heart attack, but I
feel this uncomfortable shifting of my own paradigms going on, feel like I have
a responsibility to examine the trust which I have always placed in medicine.
It’s hard to write about because I’m still reading this book and trying to
figure out what I think, and I’m grumpy that Søren is on antibiotics for
yet another ear infection and I’d love to know what standards I could use to
evaluate some of the alternatives to conventional, modern medicine…
