Author Archives
Carolyn Lee Boyd is a writer, drummer, and herb and native plant gardener. Her essays, short stories, memoirs, reviews, and poetry have been published in a variety of print and online magazines and blog sites and various anthologies. She explores spirituality in everyday life and how we can all better live in local and global community.
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We Are a Beautiful, Passionate, Inspiring, Never-Ending Story by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Your life is a beautiful, passionate, inspiring, never-ending story. It began with your ancestors long before your birth and will reverberate through untold future generations. It is infinitely complex, unique, and fascinating. Your story is deeply interconnected with other living… Read More ›
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Women Who Dig by Trina Moyles – Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Here in the north, it is harvest time when the deep and ancient relationship between women and farming once again brings forth the food on which life depends. Women have been co-creating with the Earth to feed themselves and their… Read More ›
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Transforming the Streets of Past into the Cities of the Future, Part II by Carolyn Lee Boyd
You can read yesterday’s part 1 here. Modern architects and urban planners have recently been designing buildings and urban spaces promoting values reminiscent of Old Europe and other societies with similar values. These societies are often referred to as “matriarchal.”… Read More ›
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Transforming the Streets of Past into the Cities of the Future, Part I by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Is a peaceful, just, creative, sustainable world a far-off, unattainable dream or might there be ways to begin to build such communities right in our own neighborhoods? Archeologists and scholars like Marija Gimbutas, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and Carol Christ have studied… Read More ›
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GOD IS A BLACK WOMAN by Christena Cleveland, PhD – Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd
FAR recently published an excerpt and lively discussion of Christena Cleveland, PhD’s new book God Is a Black Woman. We thought the FAR community might enjoy learning more about this memoir of her moving journey from the terror and control… Read More ›
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From the Archives: Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Moderator’s note:Today’s blogpost was originally posted March 14, 2018. You can visit it here to see the original comments. When I raise my eyes to a bird soaring over me in flight, I am no longer bound to the Earth… Read More ›
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Earth Is Our Community by Carolyn Lee Boyd
“The beauty of the planet from 100,000 miles should be a goal for all of us, to help in our struggle to make it as it appears to be.” Astronaut Michael Collins said these words reflecting on seeing the Earth… Read More ›
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Sacred Food for Body and Soul by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Soon it will be Wives’ Feast Day, a holiday celebrated in Ireland and northern England on February 2, the same day as Imbolc, Candlemas, and St. Bridget’s Feast Day. On this holiday, women (in Old English, “wife” meant simply woman)… Read More ›
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Sappho in a Locrian Mode by Carolyn Lee Boyd
The world Sappho envisions in her poetry is one with many lessons for us in the 21st century about how to live. While ancient Greek society, especially in later eras, was deeply misogynistic and women had few rights, Sappho’s words… Read More ›
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Slaying Dragons Our Own Way, Part II by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm is a Scottish dragon-slayer folk tale with many enticing details linking it to elements of an older culture centering the Earth with a reverence for female spiritual power. You can read a summary of the… Read More ›
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Slaying Dragons Our Own Way, Part I by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In winter people traditionally gather around the fire to enjoy stories as the stormy winds thunder outside. Come closer to the hearth as I regale you with Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm, a centuries-old dragon-slayer folk story from Scotland’s Orkney… Read More ›
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Hope Lives in the Twinkling of the Stars by Carolyn Lee Boyd
For millennia, we humans have found hope in the dark of winter through holidays featuring lights or the sun such as the Winter Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Soyal, Christmas, and others. As the people of our beautiful, fragile planet celebrate… Read More ›
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Reshaping Our World with Words by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Pagasasthai, kernos, thiosos, sloinneadh, taibhsear. These are centuries-old words that help describe and create a world in which the Earth is sacred and receives gratitude, people revere the wisdom of their ancestors, and those who see beyond our everyday reality… Read More ›
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The Tree of Equality in the Forest of Harmony by Carolyn Lee Boyd
For millennia, people have struggled for gender and many other kinds of equality, with progress achingly slow and sometimes regressing. Egalitarian societies have existed and do exist, such as those described by Marija Gimbutas and Heide Goettner-Abendroth and others. So… Read More ›
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When Your Garden Gardens You by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Summer is a time when we are surrounded by the power of Nature, the impulse to life, balance, and well being. Even small actions to align ourselves with it can create momentous changes and healing within ourselves and towards a… Read More ›
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Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Any new book by Judy Grahn is cause for celebration. For decades, Grahn has been a lyrical and passionate poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist whose work features both goddess wisdom and contemporary culture centering on women and queer people…. Read More ›
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Singing Is a Sacred Power by Carolyn Lee Boyd
A moss-soft ballad sung from a mountain top to the sunrise. A parent’s lullaby to soothe a newborn to sleep. Thousands of voices rising together to banish injustice from our planet. A single wavering melody infusing inspiration into a moment… Read More ›
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The Red Hand on the Cave Wall by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As I have gotten older, I find I am drawn more to non-anthropomorphic, inexpressable-in-words, nature, and everyday focused visions of the Divine. Whereas before my spiritual practice involved more rituals and circles, unusually indoors, with others, now I more often… Read More ›
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The Healing Spirit of Sacred Play by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Many years ago I participated in seasonal, Goddess-focused celebrations featuring handmade decorations, including some by enormously talented artists who attended. One year, our spring fete was graced with gorgeous paintings, intricately woven and colorful fabric art, sensuous sculptures, and exquisitely… Read More ›
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Like Water Flowing Down a Mountain: Creating Lasting Change by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As we strive to create a better future, we can look to our rich heritage of global goddess and heroine tales for insight into peaceful, creative, and effective means to achieve our goals. Let me introduce you to the delightful… Read More ›
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Women’s Spiritual Power Is All Around Us by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In this most challenging time, women are showing the world what women’s spiritual power can do. They are guiding nations, states, and communities through the pandemic and towards environmental sanity; feeding the hungry bodies and spirits of their neighbors… Read More ›
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Wisdom from our Ancient Female Lawgiver and Judge Traditions by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As I have witnessed both the joy of so many across the world at the nomination of Kamala Harris for Vice President and the deep sorrow at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am struck by the fact that,… Read More ›
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Mourning with the Goddesses, Now More than Ever by Carolyn Lee Boyd
We may all remember 2020 as the year when we could no longer look away from death. Our western culture has hidden death away in hospitals and funeral homes for generations. However, in these past months we have all… Read More ›
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Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In 1929, my grandmother wrote the word “HOME” in resounding letters across the bottom of a photo of a herself and my grandfather, smiling lovingly and confidently, with my infant mother propped in between them on a rattan chair. Within… Read More ›
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From the Wasteland Rises Hope by Carolyn Lee Boyd
For millennia, humans have told stories of goddesses who have decreed that, because terrible crimes have been committed against their female loved ones or those under their protection, our world would become a desolate wasteland. They withdrew their spiritual power… Read More ›
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Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd
When I raise my eyes to a bird soaring over me in flight, I am no longer bound to the Earth by gravity. I stop my round of daily tasks and widen my vision to view myself and our world… Read More ›
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Renewing Our Spirits in the Wilderness of Our World by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In my garden blooming with native wildflowers, in nearby rivers and woods, across the New England landscape, the Earth is healing Herself. Two centuries ago, New England’s forests had been cleared for farms; myriad species of animals, birds, fish, and… Read More ›
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Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Beneath all being is a universal rhythm that is as deep as natural law and as easy to find as the beat of a drum. After giving up an early interest in percussion 50 years ago when a school music… Read More ›
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Boldly and Outrageously Envisioning Our Way Through the Maelstrom by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As we wander together through the maelstrom of our world today, trying to keep our eyes open, our voices firm and truthful, our feet bravely taking one step and then another, may we reclaim our gift of future-envisioning boldly, outrageously,… Read More ›
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Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Outside my childhood home grows a yellow rose bush descended from one planted by my great-grandmother, Jennie, a century ago. That bush has given her descendants many gifts of spirit over the years— her love of beauty despite a life… Read More ›
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