Presenting Feminine Courage by Cheryl Petersen

Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, to sharecroppers who had been slaves before the American Civil War. Sarah married at age fourteen. Six years later Sarah was a widow with a daughter. For income, Sarah did laundry and cooked. In 1905, she remarried and became Madam C.J. Walker. With little more than a dollar, she began her own line of hair products for African American women and prospered humanity beyond imagination or expectation.

Nearly two decades back, I read “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker,” by A’Lelia Bundles. The author describes Walker’s journey from desperation to inspiration. The narrative impressed me with an exacting respect for the womanhood that embraces other women.

Madam Walker was on the verge of becoming bald. Ashamed. She prayed to God for guidance.

Unknown to her but from the same period, Mary Baker Eddy endured bouts of physical weakness. Desperate. She prayed to God for guidance.

Madam Walker had a dream, in which a man told her a hair tonic recipe. She put the ingredients together, used the tonic, and her hair grew back. The tonic was shared with other women. She told them that God answered her prayer.

Mary Baker Eddy met Phineas Quimby, a mesmerist who spoke of Christ. Quimby’s mental treatment healed Mary temporarily. Permanent healing was established after Mary learned to treat herself and other people through Christ-mind power. She told them that God answered her prayer.

Madam Walker set up a business strategy of selling her hair product to other Black women who became sales agents, sharing the profits. Eddy designed a system of mind power to reduce suffering. She compared it to Christ-like healing, and taught others how to heal spiritually. Some students set up offices and became teachers themselves of what would be branded Christian Science, sharing the profits, mentally and physically.

Walker and Eddy used the “inspired by God” storyline as a marketing strategy and were noted for becoming financially successful. They still struggled with mistakes and corrections as nothing in human existence is perfect but much more good than harm was done. And the legacy of prospering humanity with the best of it is valuable.

I recently read, A Pair of Wings, by Carole Hopson. The novel depicts the intriguing story of Bessie Coleman, born in 1892 and the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license. Her intent to fly drove her from picking cotton in Texas to learning the French language and traveling by boat to France, where she learned to fly a plane. She made it happen because at the time, in the United States, Black women were not admitted in the field of aviation. The thirty-four-year-old Bessie Coleman died in a plane crash five years after earning her license.

Setbacks happen. The human imagination distorts the successes of women. Human memories go blank. Human expectations are narrow. But evidence of the sacred feminine exists, prospering humanity.

I apply the concept of an unfolding sacred feminine to my Bible reading.

Historically, it took hundreds of years for the Bible to become what it is today after compiling various writings and the human psyche believing it is God speaking through men. But God did not only speak yester-millennium.

I can see the sacred in texts produced yesterday, now, and tomorrow.

After Bessie Coleman successfully landed her first solo flight, tears came to her eyes when being congratulated. She was the only woman in the class. Author Carole Hopson portrayed the celebration as worthy but also acknowledged that Bessie Coleman wanted to celebrate the milestone, alone. But not, really, alone. At an appropriate time, Coleman walked away to a quiet place to “pray a humble prayer of thanksgiving.”

I hear God saying, always and in all ways, you are one with me, you belong to courageous love and truth.

Author Bio

Cheryl Petersen is the author of Science and Spirituality: Celebrating the 150^th Anniversary of the First Edition of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Cheryl lives in New York and manages Healing Science Today online. 4CherylWrites@gmail.com