Feminism and Religion

Um, You Were So Happy by Vibha Shetiya

“We were so happy,” he said, emphasizing the so.

Her thoughts flashed back to that car ride. Hearing that an acquaintance was taking the GRE, she had half-jokingly quipped – “Maybe I should too.” He responded: “You should. You don’t know anything about life. Your life consists of your parents and brother and a handful of friends. It’s time you learned what it really was about,” this time stressing the really. The next few months were spent prepping for entrance exams and sending out grad school applications. Within six months, she was in the US of A.

She couldn’t believe it. She had been trapped for nearly two decades. As a child, she had had no choice. As an adult, it was too late; the indoctrination of being in a family cult had left her completely alienated; she was a stranger to herself. Marriage took on another dimension. Any chance of deprogramming was replaced by degrading, the methods remaining the same though; browbeating and gaslighting as a time-tested and guaranteed method of emotional torment never disappointed.

Earthprayer, by Molly M. Remer

Sometimes I describe my work and writing as “a love song to the Ozarks.” I am deeply embedded, body and soul, in this land that I come from, my bloodland, the place where I belong. Seven generations of my family have called these wooded hillsides and stony ridgetops home. This is my mystery school, where I explore hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

The Earth is my teacher
I shall always want
I witness her still meadows
She leadeth me to green pastures
She restoreth my soul
On tree covered hills
She reminds me I am home
and, yea, I walk in her valleys
and I fear no suffering
She is with me
Her mountains and rolling rivers
they comfort me joy bubbles through my veins
and enlivens my footsteps
my cup runneth over
truly I stand
in mysterious awareness
all the days of my life
and She holds me
in the palm of her hand
forever.

NPR meets My Telepathic Bird Lily b, part 1 by Sara Wright

I begin this story with a vignette and an invitation to meet my current family. This morning my four -pound Chihuahua made her usual rounds and ended up in the bathroom where my 3O plus year old African Collared Dove, a free flying house bird has a roost and his very own plant window. Lily b had flown onto the floor and was visiting with Coalie.

The first time I witnessed this exchange between bird and dog I instinctively swept Lily off the floor and deposited him on his perch, feeling relieved no damage had been done, though oddly Lily b was not the least bit agitated. A few days later I discovered him on the kitchen floor as Coalie was backing him into a corner. Or was she? Lily b was initiating these exchanges, so I was baffled.

Every morning Coalie stops by to see if Lily b is perched on his basket. They exchange salutations meeting eye to eye before Coalie moves on unless Lily flies down. It is impossible not to conclude that these two are engaging in some kind of play on days they meet on the floor. If Coalie can’t resist pulling at one of Lily’s feathers, he promptly spreads out a wing using it as a shield to block her. Back off he says and she does! Lily b never flies away.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Anger is Not a Panacea: The “Next Stage” after Rage

This was originally posted August 18, 2104.

In a recent post Xochitl Alvizo cited Beverly Harrison’s much-loved essay “Anger as a Work of Love.” Harrison captured feelings that were in the air at the time of its writing several decades ago. Women were laying claim to the right to be angry at the silencing of our voices, the double standard, the media portrayal of women, income inequality, lack of access to good jobs, failure to prosecute rape and domestic violence, and a host of other injustices.

Most of all we were protesting the cultural stereotype that the “good woman” (understood to be white, Christian, and married or hoping to be) would not protest loudly or at all, would turn the other cheek, and would think about others rather than herself. (Jewish women and black women had to strive doubly hard to “live up” to this standard, as it was assumed that Jewish women were “overly assertive” and that black women were “too strong” and often “angry.”)

In this context Harrison’s essay and Mary Daly’s epithet “rage is not a stage” gave women—especially white women–permission to get in touch with our feelings of anger and to express them. We understood that “good women” had been hiding and repressing their feelings for centuries if not millennia with the result that the structures of injustice remained intact.

Crushed by Design: Structural Crises and Inequitable Policies Push Female-Headed Households to the Edge, part 2 by NCRI

Part 1 was posted yesterday

The Impact of War

War has led to an increase in the number of female-headed households, as many men are killed, go missing, or are forced to migrate. This situation has, more than ever, resulted in a surge in poverty, economic instability, and severe psychological pressure among these women.

In wartime conditions, female heads of household face multifaceted crises. Given that the majority of them are engaged in informal and home-based occupations (such as knitting, tailoring, and food production), the war has dealt a direct blow to their family income by closing marketplaces, disrupting supply chains for raw materials, and reducing the purchasing power of customers.

According to a report by one of the state websites, passengers in a Tehran metro carriage, in response to the street vendors’ advertisements, say they have no money. According to this report, the faces of the female vendors are exhausted. Some of them are over sixty years old and plead with people to buy their goods. (Shafaqna, October 6, 2025)

Crushed by Design: Structural Crises and Inequitable Policies Push Female-Headed Households to the Edge, part 1 by NCRI

Moderator’s Note: This post has been posted in cooperation with the NCRI women’s committee. NCRI stands for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. This was first posted on their website on May 18, 2026. You can learn more information as well as see this original article by clicking by link below. A description of their Council can be found at the end of this post. We feel it is especially important to hear women’s voices from Iran esp here in the United States where a lot of misinformation is being disseminated along with the guns and bombs of war.

Introduction

Life for the Iranian people under the religious dictatorship is fraught with hardship and peril from every perspective. Whether through the lens of economic deprivation, poverty, and unemployment; the degradation of the environment and infrastructure; crises involving water, electricity, and air pollution; or devastating floods and earthquakes—the current generations of Iranians are experiencing a living hell. This suffering is further compounded by the comprehensive violation of human rights, characterized by suppression, torture, and executions, as well as the squandering of national wealth on nuclear and missile projects and terrorism, which has effectively led to foreign conflict.

Nature and the Body Were Never the Enemy

Reflecting on the contradictions of modern life, this essay explores how both wilderness and female embodiment became culturally suspect within Western thought. Drawing on themes of estrangement, relational ontology and kinship, it considers how practices of attention, presence and nature connection may help us return to a deeper sense of belonging.

Witchcraft as Spiritual Activism by Freia Serafina and Amie Ritchie

“Spiritual activism is spirituality for social change, spirituality that posits a relational worldview and uses this holistic worldview to transform one’s self and one’s worlds.” – AnaLouise Keating

Spiritual activism offers vital pathways for community care, resistance, and personal transformation and can take many forms. The same is true of witchcraft practices, which can follow a specific lineage, synthesize traditions, be practiced solo, be co-created in a coven of witches, and more. In this article, we’re reflecting on witchcraft as a form of spiritual activism, and approaching both in the most general terms as a starting point. We hold the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Rachel Ricketts, Starhawk, and many others, including our fellow witches, as influential and present in our thinking. Furthermore, we view witchcraft as an act of cultural, spiritual, and feminist reclamation, enabling us to carry our ancestors into the future.

*Amie’s ocean ritual for the people of Palestine*.

We arrive to the conversation as scholar practitioners, feminists, and co-facilitators of Witch Workshops. Amie is a European-descendant woman of Irish and Scottish ancestry whose work lives at the intersections of decolonizing human-water relationships, spiritual ecology, and healing-centered education. Freia is a European-descendant woman of Norwegian, Irish, and Sámi ancestry whose work seeks to heal colonial ruptures around Indigenous and matrilineal ways of knowing and being through ritual, art, and storytelling. We share these personal details as a way of sharing the standpoints that inform our views, which will of course be different from others. Hopefully our small offering can spark a conversation and ignite more witches into considering themselves spiritual activists, or vice versa.

Comrades in the Struggle – Part II by Xochitl Alvizo

This post follows Part I, which you can find here.

My journey of “seeing” continued from undergrad, to my first job, and then into grad school. After eight years of satisfying and life-giving work at the family center in Los Angeles (where I thankfully recovered my sense of self), I moved across the country to attend graduate school at Boston University (BU). I was there for eleven years, completing a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Philosophy in Practical Theology. And, again, especially during my early years at BU, I was often the only Latina in the room.¹ It was the next predominantly white context where I continued to develop as a scholar and find my way in the academy.

It is the case for most of the Latino/a scholars I know that they too were often one of just a few, if not only, Latino/a doctoral students in their program.² This has varied impacts. Being continually in places where you do not share the culture of the majority can be taxing, psychically and emotionally. It is work.

Poems for Season by Sara Wright

In late November I first snowshoed our woodland trails to include the little balsam that I lit to honor all evergreens throughout the winter months. Every day when my little dog and I circled the tree I told her I loved her and called her ‘Lightbringer’. This daily encounter never lost its magic. The Goddess Lived during the darkest winter nights!!

The rest speak to the subtle changes that occurred from late winter into spring. My writing naturally follows both seasonal and intraseasonal shifts that might not be noticed unless a person is paying close attention.

(1) Lightbringer

Will she still
be there
shining
after the storm?
Moon Bear
is on the rise.
I peer through
white flakes
at dawn
light
pierces
her powdery
fringed shawl
Love lights
the darkest
Night.

Steadfast Balsam
cloaked or not
Ever-green,
Tree of Life.
Heartlines flow
crystalline
waters
pour down
deep sleep
oh,
Daughter
of the Night
Daughter of
The Light,
Light -Bringer
Life -Bringer
The Miracle
Is that
You Live.