Yes, I Can! And so can you.

I recently returned from western New York after completing a week of service, building a deck and ramp for a man and his young son so that their cousin, wheelchair-bound, would be able to visit.  What made this week so special was the all-female work team we had this year.  The girls had participated in service projects in the past, but always with boys on their team -- teenaged boys with no more building experience than the girls had, but with a lot more confidence and a feeling that they were doing “man’s work” and as men, were magically adept at it.  During our last night wrap-up, I heard these comments from our young ladies: 

Other years, we always did what the boys told us; mostly the stuff they didn’t want to do.  This year, we asked what was the next step, and our leader handed us the plan and told us to go to it.  And we did!

The girls returned home glowing with empowerment, basking in the knowledge that they could, indeed, do man’s work without actually being men.  Maybe this experience will plant the seed that there does not need to be a dividing line between men and women; that although it takes four girls to hoist a heavy deck platform which three boys could have hefted with ease, still, the girls could do it; that there is no need to settle for leftovers.  Most of the girls will age out of the program after this, but next time they work side by side with men I hope they will remember this week, and take up that chop saw (or spatula, or pen, or steering wheel) with confidence and the knowledge that they can.  And that what they do with skill does not detract from what anyone else does. And that the masculine/feminine yin and yang swirl together so beautifully to make a circle, the yin curling around the yang and the yang filling the spaces in perfect balance, just as men and women working together fit perfectly.  And if we each allow the other to shine, the scales will be even and the world will spin ever more smoothly.