Author: Beth Bartlett

Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, Ph.D., is an educator, author, activist, and spiritual companion. She is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she helped co-found the Women’s Studies program in the early 80s. She taught courses ranging from feminist and political thought to religion and spirituality; ecofeminism; nonviolence, war and peace; and women and law. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including "Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant"; "Rebellious Feminism: Camus’s Ethic of Rebellion and Feminist Thought"; and "Making Waves: Grassroots Feminism in Duluth and Superior." She is trained in both Somatic Experiencing® and Indigenous Focusing-Oriented trauma therapy, and offers these healing modalities through her spiritual direction practice. She has been active in feminist, peace and justice, indigenous rights, and climate justice movements and has been a committed advocate for the water protectors. You can find more about her work and writing at https://www.bethbartlettduluth.com/

And Then Everything Changed: Part One: Mourning by Beth Bartlett

At the end of June, in clear contradiction to the Founders’ intent,[i] the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the President has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for . . . all his official acts.”[ii] In other words, the President is above the law, or, as Justice Sotomayor said in her impassioned dissent: “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

The ruling left many outraged. The people at large do not want a presidency unchecked by law. The ruling becomes even more chilling given the real possibility of Trump – a self-proclaimed admirer of autocrats — returning to the office of the President, and the specter of Project 2025, the blueprint by the Heritage Foundation that lays out the sweeping changes Trump and a faction of conservatives have planned to put in place if Trump is elected.

Sojourner Truth, the photos by Beth Bartlett

Moderator’s Note: We inadvertently left out the photos from Beth’s posts on Sojourner Truth. The photos, all by themselves, pack an emotional punch and so we want to be sure they can be seen. These are Beth’s photos from Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in Akron, Ohio

You can see Beth’s posts here. Part 1 and Part 2

Sojourner Truth: Part Two: The Speech and the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza by Beth Bartlett

Part one was posted yesterday.

Most of us are quite familiar with Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech as recorded by Frances Gage several years later, with its powerful “ain’t I a woman” refrain. However, the actual speech as transcribed at the time by Marius Robinson, while similar in content, does not contain the refrain. Rather, Truth simply states that she is “a woman’s rights” woman.[i] It is unlikely that she spoke in the southern dialect Gage used in her transcription, since Truth grew up knowing only Dutch, eventually learning English as spoken in New York, and probably spoke with a Dutch accent. Much of the content in the Gage version was fabricated – such as the statement that she bore thirteen children, when she only had five children, though she did cry out in a mother’s grief when she learned that her only son, Peter, had been illegally sold south to Alabama.[ii]

Sojourner Truth: Part One: Her Life by Beth Bartlett

On May 29^th, 1851, a striking, 6’ tall, African American woman rose to speak at the Women’s Rights Convention being held in Akron, Ohio. There Sojourner Truth gave her famous “Ain’t I a Woman Speech.”

Originally named Isabella, and known as “Bell,” Truth was born into slavery in 1797, the second youngest of James (“Bomefree” – Dutch for “tree”) and Elizabeth (“Mau-mau Bett”) who were enslaved by a wealthy Dutch man, Johannes Hardenbergh, Jr., who had a large estate in Ulster County, New York, which was inherited by his son, Charles, when Truth was just an infant. Upon the death of Charles, at the young age of nine, she was sold at auction to John Nealy, where she “suffered ‘terribly-terribly’ with the cold”[i] and beatings. In her own words, “He whipped her till the flesh was deeply lacerated, and the blood streamed from her wounds – and the scars remain to the present day.”[ii] She prayed for deliverance, and soon after was sold to a fisherman and tavern owner, Martinus Schriver, where she led “a wild, out-of-door kind of life,” carrying fish, hoeing corn, foraging roots and herbs for beer. Only a year later she was sold again to John J. Dumont, where she lived out the remainder of her enslavement until her emancipation by the State of New York in 1828. She described her life there as “a long series of trials” which she did not detail “from motives of delicacy, . . . or because the relation of them might inflict undeserved pain on some now living”[iii] whom she regarded with esteem. Knowing the conditions of enslaved women, we can deduce what those trials entailed. Despite her affections for a man on a neighboring estate, who was beaten to death for visiting her when she was sick, she was forced to marry a much older man, Thomas, also enslaved by Dumont, with whom she bore five children. Because Dumont reneged on his promise to free her, she walked away with her infant daughter in 1827 and was taken in by the Van Wegener family where she lived for the next year.

Listening to One Another: Part Two by Beth Bartlett

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

What are the conditions necessary to foster an environment in which we can truly listen to one another across differences? Gathering insights from many perspectives[i], Alison Jaggar outlined the essential conditions for what she called Feminist Practical Discourse or FPD. These include: 1) the creation of opportunities for participants to talk about their own lives, stressing the importance of first-person narratives and of others listening; 2) the equal importance of each person’s experience; 3) an openness to reevaluating one’s perspective; 4) the inclusion of people whose lives are different from our own and each other’s, especially those whose public voices have been most marginalized; 5) a nurturant, rather than an antagonistic environment, while still allowing for respectful disagreement; 6) participant qualities of self-discipline, responsibility, sensitivity, respect, and trust; and 7) the motivation of care and friendship.

Listening to One Another: Part One by Beth Bartlett

“Listen is such a little, ordinary word that it is easily passed over. Yet we all know the pain of not being listened to, of not being heard.“[i]

“You heard me. You heard me all the way.” So goes the oft-quoted statement of one of the participants in a consciousness-raising (CR) group in which feminist theologian Nelle Morton participated. It is a testimony to the power of what happens in CR groups – of hearing each other into speech. “When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow with us and come to life,” wrote Brenda Ueland, the first female journalist in Minneapolis.[ii] This was the blossoming born of CR groups, where women began to discover truths long buried and watch them unfold and come to life.

On Friendship: Part Two by Beth Bartlett

In Part One I began the examination of nine requisites of friendship. The first three are love, reciprocity, and honesty and trust. In Part Two, I continue the examination of the final six: world-traveling, commitment, reconciliation, loyalty, fun and play, and graciousness.

4) World-traveling. Maria Lugones’s prescription for truly knowing and loving another is to travel with them to those places where they are most at home, playful, and at ease. This may mean knowing them in their homes, meeting their families, or literally traveling to their countries, knowing them in what may be cultures and languages different from our own. This has been especially important for me as I’ve sought friendship with those whose identities are different from mine – the lesbian community in the ‘80s, the indigenous community. It has been a vital part of my friendships to travel and be with friends, and create friendships, in those places where they thrive, find meaning, and are most fully themselves.

On Friendship: Part One by Beth Bartlett

I’ve been fortunate in my life to have friends, to be a friend, though I’ve also had periods of drought without the nourishing stream of friendship in my life. The nature of my friendships have changed over time – with friends in childhood being primarily playmates, in adolescence – friends traveling in packs – gangs of girls; in grad school, mostly my colleagues. And then I discovered feminism.

I bonded with people with whom I shared a passion, a cause, and the work to bring our vision into being. We gathered in consciousness-raising groups where, in Nelle Morton’s phrase, we heard each other into speech. We helped each other discover ourselves by sharing our truths out loud – without criticism, argument, interruption, advice – simply being heard. The self-discovery in sharing the truths we had not even been willing to tell ourselves was powerful. Most importantly for me was the feminist theorists I was reading – Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Susan Griffin – who challenged me to be my authentic self, honest, open, no longer hiding behind the façade of being someone I thought others wanted me to be – myself.[i]

No Day But Today by Beth Bartlett

Driving north on I-35 after having just left a powerful Somatic Experiencing® training session in which I relived significant moments of my heart transplantation, tears streamed down my face as I blasted the musical Rent at full volume on my car’s CD player.

♪There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss

No other road no other way
No day but today

There’s only now
There’s only here . . .
No other path
No other way
No day but today♪

Kairos Time by Beth Bartlett

I love the time between the Winter Solstice and New Year’s – a time of suspended animation, a reprieve from the demands of daily life, a respite from the woes of the world, from needing to pay attention to the time of day, days of the week, and tasks that need to be accomplished. A whole week with nothing scheduled on the calendar. Simply presence. It is a liminal time on the threshold between the old year and the new – whether measured by the turning of the planet from dark to light on the Solstice or of the Gregorian calendar year – a time when many of us pause and reflect on the year past and our hopes for the year to come. It is a moment of what the Greeks called Kairos time, as opposed to Chronos time, by which we measure most of our lives — in seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years.

In the years I spent in academia, my life was governed by Chronos time that often forced me to live in the future rather than the present. Course scheduling and book orders needed to happen far in advance. Course syllabi planned students’ readings and assignments for the next several months ahead. Learning was to occur in specific blocks of time, which always struck me as such a bizarre way to teach and learn, when we’d have to break off discussion and deep learning simply because the hour was up.