Author: Carolyn Lee Boyd

Carolyn Lee Boyd’s essays, short stories, memoirs, reviews, and poetry have been published in a variety of print magazines, internet sites, and book anthologies. Her writing explores goddess-centered spirituality in everyday life and how we can all better live in local and global community. In fact, she is currently writing a book on what ancient and contemporary cultures have to tell us about living in community in the 21st century. She would love for you to visit her at her website, www.goddessinateapot.com, where you can find her writings and music and some of her free e-books to download.

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, in 2020, supremely qualified women still need to be trailblazers to hold high office. After all, goddesses and wise women gave a number of cultures their systems of laws and governance and have been celebrated for their wisdom as judges for millennia.

Here are a few of the goddesses and wise women lawgivers:

the Italian goddess Egeria gave Rome its first laws and taught the correct rules for Earth worship;
the Babylonian Kadi, was goddess of Earth and justice;
Ala of the Ibo people of Nigeria is both the Earth Mother and lawgiver of society;
the Greek Themis, daughter of Gaia, symbolized the social contract and cohesion of people living on Earth;
the Inuit Sedna both gave humanity abundance from the ocean for life from her own body and withheld it when her laws were broken;
Marcia Proba, whose historical reality is unclear, is said to have created the ancient Celtic system of laws known as the Marcian Statutes that may have influenced later British law;
past and present Women’s Councils and Clan Mothers of the Iroquois and other Indigenous peoples as well as those of Societies of Peace have brought harmony and well being to their people for tens of thousands of years.

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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 been inundated with daily images of COVID-19 patients dying alone in ICUs, terrified people and wildlife consumed by flames or flood, televised funerals of victims of racial violence, children starving due to droughts, the loss of icons of courage and compassion like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elijah Cummings, and John Lewis, and so much more. Even as we seem to be surrounded by death, we risk being inured to its tragedy by the sheer numbers of dead from these and other causes.

How we survive this time as individuals and a society may depend in part on how we are able to answer the question “Were we able to mourn each life lost – human or non-human — as a sacred being, unique and irreplaceable? Did we ignore the suffering of others or did we find deeper compassion?”

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Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd

My grandparents and mother at their home in 1929. 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 a few years the Great Depression stole that house, rendering them desolate and homeless, cutting a psychic wound so deep that it never healed.

I recently found the photo and thought of our family’s ancestors who, millennia ago in Old Europe, worshipped the Goddess in peaceful, egalitarian societies. Then and there, as in so many cultures outside modern western societies, “home” was a sacred place. As discovered by Marija Gimbutas and others, small statues of the Goddess were frequently found by the ovens inside family dwellings, and temples included rooms for both sanctuaries and workshops for making bread and weaving cloth. Houses and temples were extensions of one another.

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From the Wasteland Rises Hope by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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 that made life possible so that no fruits or vegetables would grow to nourish us or no sunlight would warm our bodies. Only when justice was done did these goddesses heal the wasteland so human life could continue.

In ancient Greece, the youthful daughter Persephone was kidnapped from her idyllic wildflower meadow to the Underworld by Hades. Her mother, the great Earth goddess Demeter, wandered the world in great despair seeking her daughter while the crops withered and the people starved. Only when Persephone was returned to live on the Earth was it again abundant. Amaterasu, the Shinto Sun Goddess, hid her life-giving light when she was angered by her brother’s desecration of her queendom that resulted in a friend’s death. Finally, when her brother was banished from heaven and she was lured from her cave and saw her sacredness and beauty in a mirror, the sun’s rays nourished the Earth once more. You may know of more stories from your own tradition.

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Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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 from above through birds’ eyes. For just a moment, as I observe beyond my usual narrow horizon, I perceive truths about myself and others that have been hidden and grasp wisdom that has previously eluded me.

From Neolithic times onwards in cultures stretching across the globe, as described by Judith Shaw, bird-shaped goddesses have embodied life, death, rebirth, and more. More recently, as noted by Miriam Robbins Dexter, these beautiful winged beings were perceived of as monsters and flying through the air was one of the accusations made against the women persecuted as witches in the Burning Times. What greater demonstration could there be of the intense terror this powerful relationship between women and birds creates in those who demand dominion over women’s bodies and souls?

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Renewing Our Spirits in the Wilderness of Our World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd 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 plants had disappeared; the network of waterways had been dammed to make power for mills.

Now trees are reclaiming land abandoned by 19th century farmers seeking better soil westward and today’s environmentalists are reintroducing native flora and fauna and hauling away obsolete dams. As a result, species not seen for generations are thriving, most of New England is again heavily forested, and whole ecosystems are reviving. Creation is once more beginning to remake the landscape into a place of wholeness, life, and connection. Continue reading “Renewing Our Spirits in the Wilderness of Our World by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd 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 teacher told me “girls don’t play drums, ” I discovered this in a World Rhythms hand drumming class at a local music conservatory. The other students, our uber-patient teacher, and I were pounding away, practicing rhythms and counter-rhythms, when we were suddenly all embraced by the flow of a single central pulse and, freed from the constant task of trying to stay on beat, created, for that moment, an entity of sound that was unique, beautiful and complex, and living.

Later I learned that “entrainment” is a well-researched phenomenon that happens when two or more entities in proximity naturally synchronize their rhythms. Entrainment causes roommates to menstruate on the same schedule, or clock pendulums to begin to swing at the same pace when placed near one another, or drummers to play perfectly on the same beat seemingly effortlessly. Continue reading “Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Boldly and Outrageously Envisioning Our Way Through the Maelstrom by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd 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, and together as a global community. In perilous times we may think that envisioning a future that may never be is a waste of time and energy. When we look into the future and see only uncertainty, we may no longer be sure that the kind of world we have been working towards for decades could ever exist.

However, it is precisely when we think we are too weary or that all attempts at progress are futile that our visions are the most important because the stakes are highest. If we have no guide towards where we want to go and do not even start on the journey, we are guaranteed to never get there. Continue reading “Boldly and Outrageously Envisioning Our Way Through the Maelstrom by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd 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 of tragedy and constant toil, her deep connection to nature persisting through four generations, her hope for the future inherent in planting anything that will take years to fully develop. When I contemplate my own fall garden and its plants sowing seeds for next year, I ponder the special responsibility we, as spiritual feminists, have for leaving to those who will come after us a legacy of inner resources that they will need to meet the challenges of the planet they will inherit and hopefully make into their own sustainable world of equality, peace and happiness.

In my mind I sit with a circle of spiritual feminists of the future. Around me might be a hairdresser or a President, a doctor, barista, poet, scientist, salesclerk, priestess, or elder. They could be old or young or in-between, from anywhere on Earth, of any spiritual tradition or practice. For one moment of time, I can speak directly to them of what I have distilled from my life that I would like them to know. I say to them: Continue reading “Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Welcoming Asylum Seekers Who Are Running for Their Lives into Our Communities by Carolyn Lee Boyd

carolynlboyd Imagine that you live in a society where people like the bloggers and readers of FAR — activists, academic, writers, and others who speak up for human rights — are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. You have finally escaped with nothing but your life to the US, only to be thrown again into prison or end up sleeping on the street homeless. Behind the endless tirades in the media and around dinner tables about America’s system of vetting and settling, or rejecting, refugees and asylum seekers, are real women and men who had the courage, wisdom and commitment to stand up for human rights as protestors, lawyers, health educators or journalists only to find themselves treated as criminals or unworthy of having basic needs met here also.

The process in the US for settling those who come because they fear for their lives is cumbersome and complex. Those called “refugees” have already been given refugee status by the US government before they arrive. They may be coming to the US to find work, to escape war, or other reasons. Refugees can work and live in public housing. Those in the most desperate straits, who arrive here without documentation because they have escaped in the middle of the night due to fear of death or persecution are “asylum seekers.” Even if they pass a “credible fear” interview at the airport, they cannot work or apply for public housing or other benefits until they obtain official asylum status or work authorization, a process that can take two years. If they do not have a local address, they can be sent to prison or may end up living in homeless shelters or on the street. Even if they can find a community of those from their country, people may not take them in out of fear of retribution by the governments back home against family members still there. Continue reading “Welcoming Asylum Seekers Who Are Running for Their Lives into Our Communities by Carolyn Lee Boyd”