I have watched every episode of Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, and most of them more than once. Though there is police violence on these programs, it is usually investigated, and viewers are given the sense that it is not OK. Not living in black America or even in the United States, I guess I was under the illusion that police forces are no longer primarily white and male, that police reforms advocated decades ago have had some effect, and that cops cannot get away with murder.
For readers who don’t watch MSNBC as avidly as I do, stop and frisk, now banned in New York City, is the policy of searching (primarily) young black men hanging around on street corners to see if they have illegal drugs or weapons on their persons. This policy can lead to the incarceration of young black men for having one or two marijuana cigarettes intended for personal use in their pockets. Stop and frisk is not a policy on college campuses, where police are just as likely to find young white men and women in possession of illegal drugs. Why? Because college authorities and parents of white college students simply would not allow it.
In this world of opposites, transformation is constant. Every moment the cells of our bodies are dying and being reborn. Matter, which flows from consciousness, dies but is reborn through the process of birth, death and rebirth. Some changes are fast and some are slow; stars live billions of years and butterflies live only a few days.
Ever since our collective experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, we both feel and are told that our world is transforming. Leaders—political and spiritual—talk about the need for transformation. Some want us to transform ourselves back to some imagined golden age, whereas other have eyes on the future, speaking of transformations we can’t yet imagine.
My own life has been one of continual transformation, an ever recurring experience of letting go of the old. I was told by an astrologer long ago that I came into this life determined to wipe the slate clean and transform myself. Admittedly it has not been an easy path, but my internal transformations have been a rich source for my paintings. Much of my art has been and continues to be about transformation.
Having always been interested in myth, I began to look for this same pattern of transformation, where the cycles of life, death and rebirth are played out in the realm of archetypes. During the early 1990s I became fascinated with Sumerian goddess Inanna, who encompasses all aspects of life, including a death-and-rebirth myth.
At that time I was undergoing a mid-life crisis, so I dove into her story of death and rebirth with a series of paintings, exploring the pain and difficulties that lead to the ultimate freedom of letting go and being transformed.
Inanna’s underworld sojourn is courageous and triumphant. Hearing the cries of her sister, Erishkigal, Queen of the Underworld, Inanna voluntarily descends into the Underworld, the world of death and dissolution. First in this series is a painting of Erishkigal, expressing her pain.
Erishkigal Moaning, oil on canvas on board by Judith Shaw
The next painting of the story, “Inanna Descending,” depicts the beginning point of Inanna’s descent, showing her at the first of seven gates to the Underworld. Yet no one could enter the realm of the Underworld dressed in their worldly attire. At each gate the gatekeeper removes part of her clothing.
This reminds us that the accoutrements of worldly success often leave us feeling empty inside. True contentment comes from within, not from our achievements or the shiny things we love and consume.
Inanna’s Descent, oil on canvas on board by Judith Shaw
Finally, naked and bowed low, she enters the throne room of Erishkigal.
Naked & Bowed Low, oil pastel on paper by Judith Shaw
Inanna, without her worldly attire, reveals her parts that have been concealed, unacknowledged, and repressed. Ereshkigal can be seen as that other neglected side of Inanna, the side which feels those feelings of worthlessness and abandonment.
Erishgikal, jealous of her golden sister of the world, shows no pity. Erishgikal focuses the eye of death on Inanna. She utters the cry of guilt and Inanna is struck dead.
Inanna is powerless. She now needs to rely on her servant Ninshubar, who represents her spiritual side. With Ninshubar and her grandfather Enki’s help, a deal is struck, and Inanna is allowed to return to her life in Sumer. My painting, “Inanna’s Return,” shows the first moment that she emerges from the Underworld.
Inanna’s Return, oil on canvas by Judith Shaw
Yet no one returns unscathed from the Underworld. The point of transformation isn’t to return to the original state, but to find a new way of being. Inanna, accompanied by the Galla, must choose someone to take her place—and that person must be loved by Inanna. To transform and move to the next level of our development, something we’re attached to but no longer benefits us must die to make way for the new.
Like Inanna, I too emerged from my mid-life crisis of the 1990s to meet the light of day with renewed vigor and vitality.
Decades have passed since my exploration of Inanna’s Descent and Return. New and ongoing difficulties emerged, making the last three years extremely challenging. In response, I solidified my meditation practice, with positive results.
My painting, “Release and Transform,” came to me as a vision while meditating. The practice focused on releasing blocks that attract negativity and turning them into magnets for positivity.
Usually, I don’t go beyond the beta-wave “monkey brain” state. This time, I slipped into a deep alpha state and saw a vague image of a woman with darkness leaving her body, and brightness all around. Afterward, I made a quick sketch of the vision. Here’s the first sketch.
A day or two later while meditating, the same vision appeared, only this time much clearer. With that experience I decided that this vision needed to be a painting, as it felt like an important metaphor for self-growth.
The second vision confirmed what my logical brain had already known: negative self-talk doesn’t begin in the heart but in the mind. It’s the light of love that originates in the heart, not negativity. I went back to the drawing table to reimagine the piece. Here’s an image of that second drawing.
Through creating this painting, along with more meditation, soul-searching, and emotional ups and downs, I’ve come to understand the two-fold message in the meditation: * let go of trying to fit into others’ versions of who I should be * and let go of my internal dialogue about lack.
Release & Transform, gouache on paper by Judith Shaw
Trying to fit into others’ versions of who I should be is a new development in my internal life, but the internal dialogue of lack has been with me for most of my adult life. From my father, to art school, to the world at large, I was told again and again that an artist path leads to poverty.
Being hard-headed, I didn’t listen. I continued on my path without regard for the security of steady paychecks and IRA contributions so lauded by our culture. Yet now at the time in life when all around me are retiring with these securities, I had become very fearful about my lack. I found myself in a part-time job I hated, being paid less than I ever had before. I believed that there were no other choices.
Yet my experience with that meditation helped me let the fear go, make positive changes such as financial rearrangements and the decision to leave the hated job, and move back into a state of trust. As surely as day follows night, abundance and confidence are flowing back to me.
In this world of dualities, we are only aware of light because of darkness, of pleasure because of pain. Even if we were to arrive at a balanced world with equality and justice, there will always be suffering. Yet through suffering, we are led to the transformation that comes from letting go—helping us grow in awareness, self-acceptance, and love.
Have you had an experience with the “dark night of the soul”? What jewels of light have been the result?
As always you can find my artworks—prints & originals—on my website, Judith Shaw Art – created by a human woman’s hands.
At 28 weeks pregnant with twins, on a gorgeous summer day, I looked in the mirror and marveled at the way my body had expanded to accommodate the two lives within. I was proud of my body, proud of myself. I put on a black, lacy bralette with matching underwear and threw a lightweight open front kaftan on top. I set my phone on a self timer and took some beautiful shots of myself. Sitting on the bed. Standing in front of a mirror. Next to the crib, looking down at my belly.
The lighting was perfect; I felt ethereal—like the definition of a glowing pregnant woman. Pregnancy is magical for about 2 seconds out of 9 months and I was basking in them. I thought about God as Mother and smiled at the way my body reflected the image of God. I uploaded a photo to Instagram. Positive comments started to come in right away.
A few minutes later, my husband Colby walked into the room asking, “Did you just post a picture of yourself wearing a bra? That’s really weird.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. He had policed my outfit choices before, and it wasn’t worth the conflict to bring it up. This time felt different. This time I was carrying a baby girl who would be a sister in a family with two brothers.
‘Hansel and Gretel’ illustration by Karrie Fransman in ‘Gender Swapped Fairy Tales’ by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett (Faber & Faber, 2020). Used for commentary and review purposes under Fair Use guidelines. Website: https://karriefransman.com/project/gender-swapped-fairy-tales/
I have always adored fairy tales and folk tales, as they were the original, shimmering mirrors of my own interior world. In my own spiritual formation, I found my earliest refuge in the ‘monsters’ of the canon. I was drawn to the Selkie, whose power lived in her shed skin, and the shapeshifters who refused to be fixed in a single narrative. These were my mysterious teachers who offered profound knowledge, that I might have an interior life that does not match the exterior expectations of the world. By re-reading these archetypes, I see that the ‘liminal’ is not a place of exclusion, but the most sacred place of all: the threshold where the divine creates.
The traditional “curse” of the beast in fairy tales can be approached as a narrative of liminality, an invitation to exist in the “in-between” where nature and spirit intersect. This “curse” is, fundamentally, a colonial misunderstanding of power and a fear of the fluid. Figures like the trickster, the shapeshifter, and the mermaid reveal that the “soul” has never been bound by a static form.
‘Little Red Riding Hood’ illustration by Karrie Fransman in ‘Gender Swapped Fairy Tales’ by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett (Faber & Faber, 2020). Used for commentary and review purposes under Fair Use guidelines. Website: https://karriefransman.com/project/gender-swapped-fairy-tales/
For generations, books have served as children’s first primers on the soul, and long before children encounter formal theology, they are offered spiritual blueprints through folklore, myths, and fairy tales. Although folklore is a metamorphic and often subversive space, too often these stories have been constrained by essentialist moralism, a framework where goodness must be beautiful, evil must be deformed, and gender is an immutable divine decree. Imagine the princess waiting in passive, delicate virtue; the prince acting with muscular, conquering strength. Any disruption of these orders (think of the cursed beast or the transformative sea witch) is framed as a tragedy, a cautionary tale against altering one’s inherent form.
But these interpretations do a profound disservice to the expansiveness of the divine. Spiritual language does not need to be rigid; spiritual experience is often the opposite. In fact, the lexicon of faith, mysticism, and mythology is uniquely, beautifully equipped to honor gender fluidity and the trans experience. To diversify children’s literature is not merely a political act; it is an act of holy reclamation.
Mirabai Starr writes that to be a mystic is to “harvest the bounty of your own soul garden,” a place that is “both wild and tended,” sometimes lush and sometimes arid.
As summer’s heat presses in and the clamor of growth and change rises to a peak of abundance and urgency, we may begin to hear a summons from deep within. The cauldron call begins, at first a whisper and then an irresistible song that leads us away from the to-do list and into a mystical realm in which dreams and desire meet and begin to bubble into possibility. May we grant ourselves space for descent, even in the middle of all that is hot and bright and beautiful. May we listen to the yearning we feel to explore the depths, stepping out of the light and into the cool shadows that beckons us to steep. Right here, right now, in the middle of all that swirls, is when we are invited to stop, to put our ears back down to our souls and listen hard. It is now that we are invited to step into the cauldron of change, to sink down and in and let everything we are carrying soften and melt away while we remember how it feels to simmer in everything we have made, all that we love to taste and serve.
For years now, August has been my “Cauldron Month,” a dedicated time in which I take my life into the metaphorical cauldron of being, to reflect, to re-collect, to reconnect, to consider what I’m “simmering” in, what is bubbling and brewing in my days, and what needs to be scooped out of the pot. It is time in which I review the year to date and consider where I’m going, what I’m savoring, and what I’m dishing up to serve.
” I would say it’s not just patriarchal men in power. The patriarchal women in power are doing plenty of damage as well. The cruel choices are deliberate and to see the pretzels they turn themselves into to justify the cruelty is a sight to behold.” Janet Rudolph
During the last year I have been repeatedly betrayed by women. In retrospect my mother initiated me into woman betrayal by terrorizing a sensitive little girl by threatening to send her away if she wasn’t ‘good’. My terror of all women and my mother’s skepticism/dismissal of my grandmother as an ‘old woman’ whose opinions didn’t matter eroded my relationship with my grandmother that followed me into adulthood with catastrophic effects.
My fear kept me separate from the comfort of developing friendships with any woman until I became a feminist (yet I felt like an orphan when my grandmother died so my love for her survived).
I came to feminism through the back door through my love for Nature, the only real mother I have ever known. My love for animals, plants, trees, did their best to sustain me although I was very lonely. It is important to acknowledge that I also chose to be alone because I seemed to have so little in common with women in general (my 50 percent).
I believe that we can restore our hope in a world that transcends race by building communities where self-esteem comes from not feeling superior to any group, but from one’s relationship to the land, to the people, to the place, wherever that may be.—bell hooks
In these words from her poignant memoir-reflection-analysis Belonging, bell hooks suggests that rather than creating identity by comparing ourselves to others, whether in the academy, in communities, or in the larger society, we would do better to root our identity in the land.
Hooks “left home” in rural Appalachia in order to pursue “higher” (why do we call it that?) education including a Ph.D. which enabled her to teach at prestigious universities in the urban north. Despite her considerable success as an academic and a black feminist, hooks suffered persistent depression in the cities where she taught. Eventually she diagnosed her dis-ease as a longing for the home she had left behind, specifically as a need to connect with the traditions of her ancestors, the mountains, and the land that had sustained them since the end of slavery.
Hooks asks if one of the reasons that so many black people have failed to thrive in the urban north has to do with the loss of connection to the land and ancestral traditions that occurred with twentieth century migrations to the north. Though black people—and hooks herself—hoped to find greater freedom and dignity in the north, hooks wonders if the price they paid was too high.
The other day my partner, her mother, and I visited one of the family gravesites. We go together all three of us, or just sometimes my partner and I, at least two times a year. My partner’s mother certainly goes more often, especially to the gravesites in Prague. I have noticed that Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and the non-religious alike are all often buried in one cemetery, although it is sometimes divided into sections to accommodate some religious beliefs; that seems to be the case in many places throughout the country.
It is typical to visit the cemetery on Dušičky, or All Souls’ Day, and most Czechs, regardless of religious background, participate in the tradition. While this is a common time to visit, it is very typical to see Czechs in cemeteries tending to gravesites throughout the year. This involves cleaning them, washing the gravestones, removing spent flowers and offerings, adding new ones, and lighting candles in remembrance. Cemeteries in the Czech Republic are busy, colorful, peaceful places on account of this. My partner’s family will also offer prayers after finishing the ritual, but I am not sure if this is common as I only ever go with them.
Long before the first wave of feminism in the mid-nineteenth century had its initial launch, a well-established religious movement sparked a socio-political awakening in India. The processes of social and cultural integration in the bhakti tradition have significantly reshaped medieval Indian society. To understand the reclamation inherent in the bhakti movement, one must first acknowledge the ‘dominant power structure’ that prevailed.
The orthodox Brahmanical hierarchy (the priestly class) enforced a strict monopoly over religious ceremonies, temple access, and sacred texts. On the other hand, spiritual knowledge was bound within Sanskrit, a language only upper-class men could learn. The bhakti movement arose from a desire for a direct relationship with God while rejecting society’s rules and rituals. Women and marginalised castes were heavily oppressed and restricted from public spheres. Since religious space was the only space available to women in the early medieval period, many women embraced bhakti (devotion), and it eventually provided them space to define their own voices that revised society, relationships and religions.
The bhakti movement, since its emergence in the 7th century in South India, had a seismic impact on women and marginalised groups. Ideas of inclusivity, accessibility, and connectivity were running through reforms and resistance. A small but steadily growing group of thinkers called for the democratisation of the Divine against the social hierarchy in religious practises. Many women supported this reform with resilience, as they knew that change, whether conservative or revolutionary, would inevitably shape gender relations and advance women’s rights.
Feminism and Religion 