From the Heart of the Garden

Our Mother's Gardens

By Wilma Livingstone

Nurturing gives sustenance to the act bringing up. It is the sum of environmental influences and conditions acting on the creature. The Creator has extended nurturing to all of creation to care for that, which is created physically and spiritually.

Alice Walker the author of The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mother’s Garden introduced to the American lexicon the term "womanist." Gretchen E. Ziegenhals, defines a womanist as one "who speaks out, speaks up, speaks against or in defense of something important a woman who loves herself, her culture, and who is committed to survival. "She is also, by definition and by common usage, a woman of color, a woman who inevitably has viewed life and society from the underside. She is, Walker says, purple -- purple with rage, purple as restored royalty, purple blossoming wild in an open field. "Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender," declares Walker. A womanist is bold, brassy, "universalist," as Walker describes her, "committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female"

This section is committed to speak out, speak up, and speak against the issues affecting women.. Issues affecting young women such as teen pregnancy shall be highlighted. Issues affecting young men, such as peer pressure are addressed. Life style diseases such Acquired Immunodeficiency (or Immune Deficiency) Syndrome and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), sexually transmitted diseases, juvenile and adult diabetes, hypertension , cancer, stroke and heart disease.

Poverty is spoken out against in this section as an opportunity to the resurrecting power of God’s love in Christ. Our Mother’s Garden’s has provided space for the nurturing of careers from the this the seed of springs forth from the crust of the earth. Women of color can be liberated from poverty through the principles of asset creation and debt reduction These principles are cast against the backdrop of capitalism that seeks to divide labor and its associated wages with the intent to exploit people that live in the margins. These marginalized people include women of color that may have experienced the challenges of parenting, caring for others and themselves, along with the challenges debilitating diseases.

Through caring for oneself and others nurturing is centric to the issue of quality of life affecting women of color. After several centuries of looking at herself through the lens of the servant and the servant of the servant womanist must move beyond the myth of them being labeled as Jezebel, Aunt Jamama, and whence to a place illuminated by the light of the love of God.