INTRODUCTION 

To follow is Chapter 12 in a series that is my personal transformative journey from my early years. This story began with me living as a long term unemployed single parent with two children with different fathers, never being married. I was definitely on the bottom rung of society. I lived in the highest unemployed town in the UK with the demise of its Iron and Steel, Chemical and Shipbuilding industries, thus experiencing years of poverty and ostracisation. This is the story of how, supported by a strong Christian faith, I deeply analysed and navigated my way through it all, to an absolutely fulfilling life.

In the light of what’s happening in this chaotic world today, I feel moved to tell my story with all its different facets, because my main hope is that the reader will see the human face of the marginalised. Then, hopefully, gain a more compassionate understanding of all those who live on the margins of society. I hope the reader finds clues on how to make connections with people different from them, or to change the top down competitive economic system so all people are justly valued whether they were in paid work or out of paid work.

I invite the reader to pick any chapter and, if it resonates with you, to organise a zoom working group to discuss and explore any particular issue or let it inform the work you are already doing. 

I acknowledge that every single one of us has our own unique experience from our own unique perspective waiting to be heard and learned from. This is simply my experience. I’d love to maybe one day hear and learn from yours.  

Linda Granville

To read Chapter 11, click HERE.

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CHAPTER  12  ~ After Retirement Reflections

I’ve now been retired for 11 years and have reached the ripe old age of 76. In this era of drastic government cuts and redundancies, especially in my area of North Yorkshire, I’ve tried with others to set up and promote Time Banks across the region which included performing 11 pantomimes in eight remote rural villages to promote it. Our virtual unit of currency was called a ‘doofer’ and our motto was, “We Doofer Each Other.”

My friend and I wrote a pantomime script called ‘Flo White and the Seven Doofers’. WE HAD GREAT FUN DOING IT.

However, lock down and isolation against Covid completely set us back.  Before Covid, I was on a campaign march to stop fracking in our local area, but now I’ve embarked on a new adventure. I’ve been travelling deeply into mindfulness meditation, transcendental meditation, and energy healing which I volunteer to facilitate with the University of the Third Age (U3A).

Conclusion

To conclude all of my twelve chapters, my big HOPE is that I have conveyed some clues about how to create an alternative economic system that values all people in or out of paid work. I hope I’ve conveyed the consequences of prejudice and division at many levels. I hope readers have inspired ideas on ways to peacefully deal with those divisions from the grass-roots level all the way up. I hope people are encouraged to be more aware of their own government’s demeaning tactics that promote the marginalised as the scapegoats for draconian economic and social policies. I hope through my pages, people have become more understanding and in turn more compassionate toward the homeless, the unemployed, young people, sanctuary seekers, LGTBQ groups, and abused women of all faiths and cultures. I’ve listened to women’s horrendous stories of historical global patriarchal abuse and women’s desolate feelings of ‘nothingness or non be-ing’. 

Our current economic and social structures and the way we see life in general have perpetuated a world of subordinates. Not only men over women, but employed over unemployed, first world over third world, west over east, north over south, white over black, free man over slave, heterosexual over homosexual, one faith over another faith, rich over poor, religion over atheism, able bodied over disabled, and on and on. WHY?   

I believe subordination of any kind is intrinsically linked and bound up in the universal conditioning of how we perceive God to be, and that conditioning is man made and power based. The male language for God in most religions inevitably perpetuates women’s subordination across the world. God is love and love has no gender.   

The world seems to be crucifying itself. But beyond crucifixion is the basic Christian belief of resurrection. Resurrection is not getting down off the cross and going back to the spot that put us there in the first place, putting tiny plasters on our wounds. It’s about sticking with the cross, standing where the seeming opposites intersect, learning from each, and then going beyond the cross into a new and better all-inclusive way of be-ing.  

As a woman of faith, I ask myself, could the same truly loving God that liberated me as a woman be the same God that perpetuates this and oppressive subordination of others across the world?

I deeply resonate with a quote from Mary Daly’s book, ‘Beyond God the Father’:  

Why indeed must God be a noun?

Why not a verb, the most active and dynamic of all?

The human symbols for God may be intended to convey personality, but we fail to perceive that God is Be-ing.

That which it is over against is Non Be-ing. 

Women (and I would argue any other subordinate group) who have travelled through their experience of Non Be-ing in the process of liberation, are able to perceive this because… 

Our liberation consists of refusing to be ‘the other’ 

And asserts instead… “I am” without making another the ‘other’.

I now have six fantastic grandchildren and I love the whole of my family very much. I am absolutely blessed. However, I cannot finish this rote without first, highly honouring, alongside Jesus Christ, two very incredible people who have, without a real choice of their own, travelled this often tough journey beside me – through the long arduous childhood and teenage years of real frugality, frustration, and tears, yet much much more laughter. I will never underestimate their true sacrifice supporting me, missing out on what other kids had, affecting their lives in ways even I might never understand. I thank them for understanding my passion for justice, striving for a world worthy of them to live in. This whole incredible journey started and ends with them … my two (inside and out) beautiful girls, Rebecca and Georgia.   

The End. 

Linda Granville. 

To read Chapter 11, click HERE.