Feminism and Religion

Tree Huggers by Beth Bartlett

Amrita Devi Beniwal, Wikimedia Commons,
Nishanttaliyan07

The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another. How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the two are inseparable. . . . the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us separable .. . . [i]

Two maples just outside our home grow intertwined. They are consummate tree huggers. Begun as two trees standing beside each other, they eventually embraced, grew together and became one, and several years later branched out into their individual growth once again. Not withstanding Kahlil Gibran’s thoughts on marriage —

…let there be spaces in your togetherness, . . .
Stand together yet not too near together. . .
For the . . .oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow[ii]

— the maples have found a way to grow together and apart, in each other’s shade and sun, thriving. We have much to learn from them.

I’ve encountered so many tree huggers in the woods, and each time am thrilled and delighted by the ways in which they embrace and swirl, entangling their lives with each other’s in a dance of life and limb. They know how to lean on each other, supporting each other through the worst of the winds, and sharing the sunshine. They seem to draw strength and sustenance from each other, and as we know from Suzanne Simard’s work, indeed they do, nourishing each other, their roots undoubtedly entangled even more than their trunks and branches – an extended family of trees entwined in the soil underneath.

Archives from the FAR Founders: Process Thought: Feminist Friendly Metaphysics by Xochitl Alvizo

This post was originally published July 18, 2o12.

“To be is necessarily to be in process and engagement with the lure of creative advance (that is, with God). In this sense, God is the poet of the world continually luring the world toward its full be-coming.“

“It all goes back to one’s metaphysics.” That is what my TA said in the first theology class I took during my masters program. We were discussing our theological statements in class – a statement that outlines our individual understanding of God, humanity, sin, etc. – presenting them to one another for feedback and discussion. As we argued and discussed (“How can you possibly believe that?”) our TA made the case that our theological statements and the varying differences among them were largely determined by our particular metaphysics – that is, they are determined by whatever we hold to be the nature of existence. That is to say, if science studies the physical world, metaphysics is the result of asking questions about the underlying reality of that physical world – about the nature of the physical world and by extension all of existence. As one can imagine, not all metaphysics are created equal, but all of them are theories with enormous implications.

Cracked Stone: An Artist Works with her Muse by Sara Wright

I open the door to step on fieldstones that I have carefully placed, stone by stone to create a ‘patio’ of sorts out of what used to be an eyesore. First flooded waters sat there in mud, then on thin layers of gravel. Just outside my door. This one area roughly 12x 24 is the only flat piece of ground on this property. Water and ice just sit there forever. Winters have been hell.

About six years ago I put in a side door to escape the mountains of snow that slid off the roof burying the front door for 7- 8 months of the year. I shoveled the roof and path to this door for all the years I have lived here until recently. I gave up this practice at 75 for safety reasons after breaking my foot but was stuck with mucky ground. Worst for me was that the space was so ugly – the rest of this property with its winding brook, field and forested hills is astonishingly beautiful.

Even when I could use the front door I dragged in old leaves, mud, gravel and made myself crazy with housework which I despise. I could not keep the floors clean.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Spirit of Capitalism vs. the Spirit of Traditional Rural Life

This was originally posted on Dec 29, 2014

In this picture, Marika from Skoteino Crete toasts our group and downs a glass of her homemade raki. Marika, who is best friends with Christina who makes lunch for us, has just returned from her home next door with her gift of a glass of raki for each of us.

Marika, who has little, is eager to give to us. Hers is but one of many gifts from the heart we receive on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Why is it that we who have so much do not give as spontaneously?

One answer is that capitalist individualism has taught us to count our worth by how much we have and to fear for the day when we will have nothing.

These words may be a cliché, but they hold a profound truth nonetheless.

Heide Goettner-Abendroth tells us that in matriarchal societies with small-scale sustainable agricultural economies, people did not hoard or save for a rainy day. With the labors of their bodies and minds, they took only what they needed from the land. When there was a surplus, they gave parties, sharing what they had with others. Even with the coming of patriarchy, ancient matriarchal customs of generosity survived among rural farmers.

How I Have Been Influenced by Poet Ellen Bass by Charlotte Donlon

“When You Return” by Ellen Bass

Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back in the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters un-write themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark’s lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider’s belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart.

This poem appears in Ellen Bass’s book “Like a Beggar” published by Copper Canyon Press in 2014 For more information on Ellen Bass and her poetry go to her website https://www.ellenbass.com/ Poem posted here under “fair use” guidance.

While warming up beside an enormous stone fireplace with a dozen other writing workshop participants in western North Carolina, I listened to an instructor read the poem “When You Return” by Ellen Bass. I had come to the retreat wrung out from church trauma and the ache of not knowing where I fit in anymore. As the flames crackled and spit, the reader spoke words that singed the edges of longings I hadn’t yet noticed—longings for crooked paths to be made straight, for broken things to be made whole. I was crying by the time he recited the last few lines— “the way it was / before the world was born, / that fresh, that whole, nothing / broken, nothing torn apart.” The tears surprised me; a snowmelt after years of frozen longing that finally began to thaw.

Spiritual Direction for Writers by Charlotte Donlon

I fell in love with poetry when I began graduate school for my MFA in creative writing. Looking back at the poems I was reading and writing ten years ago, I can connect the dots among my relationship with poetry, my faith, and my rejection of the patriarchy.

Most poems felt like prayers to me back then; they still do. I often say the word “poem” when I mean to say “prayer” and “prayer” when I’m trying to say “poem.” Half the time I don’t even notice that I’ve misspoken because the words and what they represent are so tightly woven together. If I don’t sense much of a personal connection to the themes of a poem I’m reading, I view it as I view a psalm that doesn’t feel especially resonant at the moment–I know that somewhere someone will feel seen and known by the words, and I am in some sense reading on their behalf, as I hope that on my harder days, people are reading and praying on mine. I trust the collective, the mystery, the power of words to connect souls and minds across time and space.

Putting myself in the way of poetry became a spiritual practice while I was struggling to find my place in the conservative evangelical denomination my husband and I had been members of for almost 20 years. We had engaged in conversations about women in the church, racial healing, mercy and justice—topics that we viewed as intimately connected to what it means to be a Christian in our everyday lives. We pushed for change. We led small groups without shying away from difficult conversations. We brought in speakers and coordinated film nights. We tried so hard to make our local church something it wasn’t–something it would never be.

Move Your Spirituality: Transforming Symbols into Embodied Knowing

A question I’ve been exploring for most of my life is: what changes when we move our spirituality, or let movement become our spiritual practice? In this essay I offer some characteristics of a moving spirituality that I explored in my PhD and later in my book Dancing in the Muddy Temple: A Moving Spirituality of Land and Body.

Dove in the Branches. Image by Andy Murray

Movement is about Connection & Transformation

First of all, movement adds a different language for encountering the sacred. It’s not just ‘sitting still and emptying the mind’, or ‘dancing ecstatically’ (did you know that ecstasy means something like ‘having the god within’?).

Instead, it is a way of searching for and communicating with the layers of the seen and unseen world.… Recently I even start to see it as a way of encountering the mystery in the space between, between objects, emotions and thoughts.

Mabel McKay (1907-1993): “Dreamer” and Master Basket Weaver of the Northern California Pomo Indians, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

part 1 was posted yesterday

The last sucking doctor of the Pomo

Mabel healed people with songs that spirit sang through her. Eventually, she was taught to suck. Into a sucking basket she had woven, she spat out what she had sucked out of her client. People came from all over for her healing and she traveled far to heal others. She needed singers and translators to help her when she worked. Many people came to witness.

When Mabel was raised, traditional healing was beginning to go out of fashion and even be suspect. But Mabel’s work was widely sought after by the local indigenous population from all the various tribes who worked on the farms and lived on the reservations in the area of Northern California.

Sarris describes her extracting a salamander-like creature from a woman’s eye, gallons and gallons of water from a man’s chest and an evil spirit from another.

Mabel McKay (1907-1993): “Dreamer” and Master Basket Weaver of the Northern California Pomo Indians, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on July 23rd, 2024. You can see more of their posts here.

It’s hard to know what might have happened to Mabel McKay if her grandmother Sarah had not made it a point to care for and protect her. Sarah recognized her as a Dreamer, one who is owned by spirit.

Mabel’s great-grandfather, Sarah’s father, had been a medicine man descended from those before him. Sarah’s brother, Richard, had started the Dream religion “after the white people had taken everything but their souls to Dream”(Sarris 8). Sarah recognized the signs in her granddaughter but worried there was no one left to teach her.

One of the signs Mabel was a Dreamer is how she talked in her sleep at night as a girl, out loud speaking her Dreams. Spirit talked to her in her waking hours as well. She was a strange child and there was a lot of worry around her.

Autumn Equinox ’26 – Seeding by Sara Wright

Everywhere I go seeds are taking to the air or spilling out of capsules, flowerheads, mushrooms and lichens.

Yesterday two women gathered in the local pollinator garden where millions of seeds were rattling in light winds. Hundreds of wild asters had shriveled flowerheads, seeds still hidden. Some bean pods were splitting open spilling out black and white beads. The entire garden was a celebration of what seeds do so effortlessly. Provide for the Future of Life.

Accustomed to a riotous bouquet of blossoms, initially I noted the lack of brilliance that characterized summer in this overstuffed garden! But because we were meandering, I began paying more attention to seed heads while the woman I was with was collecting seeds. The more I looked the more ingenious these capsules, seedheads, pods became! I too began seeding, entranced by the infinite variations on one theme; after a while all I could see were seeds!

This was a perfect day to acknowledge the autumn equinox turning because this was the time of the seeding up and the time of letting go.