She Brings Me Water
An aeclectic look at the nearby worldAbout Us
“Do make the home your career, for this is the greatest career any soul can make in the earth. To a few it is given to have both a career and a home, but the greatest of all careers is the home, and those who shun it shall have much yet to answer for. For this is the nearest emblem of what each soul hopes eventually to obtain, a heavenly home. Then make your home as a shadow of a heavenly home. For the home where there is unity of purpose in the companionship is the nearest pattern in the earth of man’s relationship with his Maker. For it is ever creative in purpose, with personalities coordinated for a cause, an ideal.”
Edgar Cayce (1070-1)
Mari’s husband, Rod moved from his home state of California to Virginia/North Carolina partly to be near where Edgar Cayce had lived and where his readings, his life’s work, are stored (The Association for Research and Enlightenment). As a young man, Rod had become dissatisfied with the state of his health and turned to the readings of Cayce for guidance. When we were married, Rod taught me, Mari, what he’d learned and had been practicing for many years.
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What a beautiful quotation from Cayce – it makes me feel as though there is more value in being a ‘homemaker’ than is normally admitted in a society where it’s almost expected for both partners in a marriage to have full-time jobs. I lost my very demanding half-day job a few months ago, and so I’ve been able to devote much more time, energy and love to our home and garden. Reading Cayce’s words makes me feel less like a ’social failure’ for that. Thank you for sharing that.
Thanks, Reggie. I have this quote up on my refrigerator and it gives me comfort as well. Isn’t it funny that in a society where it used to be expected that women would stay home and make the home their career, we now feel like failures if we do stay home? Of course I’m speaking of the US; is it the same where you are?
Yes, it’s similar here in South Africa. There is still a very clear ‘division of labour’ in our society, perhaps because we are still more of a patriarchal and traditional society. Women are expected to bring up the children and to look after the home – but nowadays they are *also* expected to work, if not full-day, then at least half-day. The economic downturn isn’t helping matters there!
Also, men earn more than women would for the same position (though the glass ceiling might make it impossible for women to even GET that position, even if they are talented and skilled). As a result, men are still regarded as the main breadwinner here, but I don’t really mind that. What I do find unfair, though, is that even if both partners work, household chores are almost exclusively ‘women’s work’.
But I confess that I don’t really mind the ‘gender division’ in my own personal life – I really prefer to work independently from home (even if my income from proofreading, editing and writing is very unpredictable), and to look after the home and garden – and my husband, of course!
The stress of working a long day AND doing all that really isn’t good for one’s mental, emotional or spiritual health.
In South Africa, the situation is complicated, however, by the implementation over the last 15 years of policies of race-based ‘affirmative action’, which give preference to non-white men (mainly blacks, but also coloureds, indians, chinese) over white men. There are also quota systems in place for increasing the number of women in the workplace.
It’s all become really messy and unpleasant, this kind of social engineering, although I do realise that it’s a way of (over-)compensating for years of racial oppression, and swinging the scales the other way to achieve balance.