At the 2009 meeting of the Parliament of World Religions, former US President Jimmy Carter called the worldwide abuse of girls and women the greatest unaddressed human rights crisis of our time. In the book that followed the speech, he… Read More ›
This parshah contains the account of Jacob’s marriages to Leah and Rachel, (who happen to be his cousins) as well as the birth of his 11 sons and one daughter. It describes the long amounts of time Jacob worked for… Read More ›
This summer I committed an act of radical and deeply liberating change. I started taking Sundays off, a new thing for me. As a writer, I had come to regard Sunday as just another working day, part of the… Read More ›
Second Class Citizen When he backed me up against the tree inching towards me menacingly with his big powerful car I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was holding the space for a car full of dogs waiting to… Read More ›
This has been another hard month. I don’t feel it to be hard. I just know objectively that it is. The typical challenge of balancing my work with the children’s needs and the management of a household has been intensified by the onset… Read More ›
In the first part of this article, I looked at how Carol P Christ’s Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality are related to traditional women’s ritual dances of the Balkans. After more than thirty years of researching and teaching these dances… Read More ›
Happy Midterm Election Day 2018!! The first article I ever wrote for Feminism and Religion, (“I Never Thought That I Would Need to Be a Part of History,”) ran just a couple of weeks after the inauguration of the current… Read More ›
From the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference: Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image: With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. With the courage of our convictions we pour out our life blood for… Read More ›
Come with me in your imagination to an old land, a Demi-Olympus, a fabled and possibly invented land to the north of Mount Olympus, home and throne of the fabled Olympian gods. It is to this Other Olympus that the… Read More ›
In Rebirth of the Goddess, feminist theologian Carol P Christ offered a list of ‘Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality’.[1] She revisited the Nine Touchstones in an interview with Karen Tate on Voices of the Sacred Feminine titled ‘Gratitude and Sharing:… Read More ›
Trigger warning: rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual content In Part 1 of this story, I introduced a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive… Read More ›
I found the confirmation hearings of now Justice Kavanaugh deeply disturbing. I have ideas for preventing a replay. First, secret keeping doesn’t work. For too long girls/women have suffered in silence with their secret while boys/men move along often without… Read More ›
Samhain is upon us. Halloween. The Day of the Dead. All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day. That liminal time of year when the doorways to what the Celts called the Otherworld, Annwn in Welsh, are open. In New York City, we have the 45th annual Village Halloween Parade, a queer extravaganza of puppetry, masquerade, and cross-dressing that draws some 60,000 participants and over 2 million onlookers. Elsewhere, we have children in costume and lawns covered with plastic skeletons and illuminated ghouls. Everywhere, if we’re lucky, we might catch a glimpse of “the piper at the gates of dawn,” the vision granted Rat and Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: “something very surprising and splendid and beautiful”—Pan the goat-god, boundary-crosser, Friend and Helper, trans-being.
I have had the honor of sitting vigil with dying people. And I have prayed through the coming of the death rattle. It can be painful to witness, especially for those witnessing death for the first time. Sometimes the person… Read More ›
A pilgrim leaves home and sets off on a journey, seeking healing, revelation, and direction in her life. She finds companions along the way whose stories reflect her own, validating her quest and shedding light on her journey. According to… Read More ›
Why is this bar still important? (Read Part I) For the gender queer, marginalized community who are testing the waters of gender difference by frequenting this bar, many for the first time, for the pool leagues, and yes, the college… Read More ›
I spent last weekend in Norfolk, Virginia. I was brought there by the folks at Old Dominion University; my visit was brainstormed and facilitated by y Professor Cathleen Rhodes who teaches in the Women’s Studies Department and also manages a… Read More ›
See Part I of Pub Church series here The question arising among a group of friends gathering for fish and chips on Fridays – why can’t church be more like this? – was the clarion call that sparked the birth… Read More ›
The rising voices of female empowerment, consciousness, and position has been an undertaking in the last two centuries. Yet societies are still using fairy tales; tales that were written at least 500 years ago. Many of the fairy tales can be… Read More ›
It’s been a very tough month for women. The “Me Too” movement started in 2006, when Tarana Burke coined the phrase “Me Too” as a way to help women who had survived sexual violence. Then on October 15, 2017 it was… Read More ›
Last night I had a nightmare. I am dressed in a white cloak that obscures all but my face. The robe is splattered with paint and blood. I am awash in every color of the rainbow and dripping paint. I… Read More ›
There is a very big elephant in the room. Apparently it is invisible because even the left is not discussing it. This elephant is the civil war in Yemen to which Saudi Arabia has contributed 19,000 (19,000!) deadly (deadly!) air… Read More ›
“Women, when you begin to make fierce sounds on your own, don’t be surprised if it’s difficult at first. Start gently. Get close to the earth. These sounds may bring up memories, emotions. Have a way to work with them…. Read More ›
With the recent confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and the torturous treatment of Christine Blasey Ford, we are reminded that we continue to live in a rape culture and very often, Christianity — and religion in general — is used as… Read More ›
I am falling in love with failure. At least I’m trying. It is time I have to. We shouldn’t, lovely womyn, be short on our accomplishments. It doesn’t matter how slow going we’ve been, what we haven’t done yet, or… Read More ›
As my late and dearly missed Professor, Dr. Otto Maduro, put it, “One mile from the courthouse, it’s complicated. One hundred feet from the courthouse, it’s not.” In that spirit, with just a couple of weeks until Nov 6, I submit… Read More ›
Climate scientists have been screaming the alarm for literally decades. Despite global efforts, they now say we have 12 years left to contain the damage: the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C warming means tens of millions of lives lost, not… Read More ›
As I finalize my manuscript for Women Rise Up, to be published with the FAR press in early 2019, I want to share this excerpt from my chapter on Mary Magdalene. The Spirit of God moves at unexpected times and places…. Read More ›
The parshah for this week is Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1-17:27). I’ve actually written about Lech Lecha on this forum before, concentrating on the parental aspects of the divine. See here. However, this time I want to look at the Torah… Read More ›
My 2010 video docudrama about the Pendle Witches. Fun fact: my Welsh pony makes a guest appearance here. Come Halloween, the popular imagination turns to witches. Especially in Pendle Witch Country where I have lived since 2002. This… Read More ›
