She is calling for a Yin/Yang energy, a Feminine/sacred masculine energy, to balance self and culture. Culturally speaking, would it be a revolution to bring feminine values into the very structures of what we call education, politics, economics, art, and religion?

When we finally face the foundational ideology that denies climate change and derives from a deep animus against mother earth, we can, with her guidance, move beyond the patriarchal pessimism and control addictions that were truly flourishing in her century as a misbegotten response to the Black Death plague. Then authoritarianism took precedence over community and despair reigned. It all echoes what Adrienne Rich observed, a “fatalistic self-hatred” accompanies patriarchy wherever it goes.

Julian calls us beyond mere knowledge to Wisdom. Now wouldn’t that be a revolution in education were we to follow her lead? For hundreds of years, during the modern era, education has been in pursuit of knowledge and not wisdom. Indeed, wisdom was shelved precisely because wisdom is feminine and patriarchy had no place for it and because wisdom is cosmic, not human centered. Education as a pursuit of wisdom was “pre-modern” and not modern. In the Bible wisdom is feminine and in most languages and cultures around the world. But the modern world banished her. Not so, Julian and the pre-modern consciousness.

By calling us to wisdom (as well as knowledge) Julian and Mother’s Day are calling us to a revolution in consciousness, a life of caring and interdependence. Does all this begin to name the next leap in our evolutionary journey?