Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
breathe me
compel my flesh to stir.
will new landscapes through
your pores.
dine upon my potent supplication.
peel the lonely longing from
your swelling desire.
partake of flaming majesty, while
speaking: yes, over and over and
over again, rising and falling in
love’s newly remembered caress.
breathe me in.
breathe me out. Continue reading “Agape: Inspiration and Word Made Flesh by Margot Van Sluytman”
Did you believe in magic?
Did you once believe in fairies, leprechauns and and flying dragons? Did you believe that if you climbed a tree to the uppermost branches, you could touch the sky?
Do we need magic?
As the country finds itself reeling from the proclamations of anew administration, I have found myself, like so many others, in need of comfort. One of the places I find comfort is music. There is the music of ritual and meditation, the music of dance, the music of heartbreak. It can energize and uplift; it can soothe the hurt away, it can take you to distant lands.
After the experience of the Women’s March on Washington, I chose the protest music of Peter, Paul and Mary. I found myself listening to “Puff, the Magic Dragon”, an old favorite. I have listened to this song many times through the years, but this time, I understood it in a completely different way. Continue reading “Puff the Magic Dragon & the Loss of Magic by Susan Morgaine”
Like many other thousands of Americans, I watched the newest offering from the Star Wars legacy last autumn and was re-inspired to be an active part of the rebellion against oppression. Viewing the movie through my feminist lens I was cheered on by the choice of actors and actresses in lead roles and was reminded of Margaret Mead’s famous quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
It may be easy to compare the new president to Lord Vader because he is an easy target who encourages mockery and ridicule. However, tyranny, violence, and power trips have long been a part of world societies, for centuries. It is as evident as ever that we must continue to stand against such debilitating realities. We must stand together.
And, like millions of other people across the world, I had the privilege to participate in a Sister March to the Women’s March on Washington; shoulder to shoulder with passionate and caring people determined to make a difference. The experience generated feelings of elation, hope, and unity. I was most impressed by the kindness radiating from every person I came in contact with. Even though spaces were packed with people the overall atmosphere was conscientious, polite, and caring. Peaceful activism is critical to progress.
I also listened intently to the speeches made at the marches; especially by the women well known in popular culture. Gloria Steinem, a cornerstone of the modern feminist movement, spoke words that I believe reflect the change in values that I visualize in the form of a river current. “God may be in the details, but the Goddess is in connections. We are at one with each other, we are looking at each other, not up.” Women’s work is the creation of the web; the tapestry of connections between us all and the building of momentum in the stream bed. Continue reading “Join the Rebellion by Jessica Bowman”
On the morning of January 20, 2017, the world watched Donald J. Trump stand on Capitol Hill for inauguration as the 45th president of the United States. He did not stand alone. Timothy Michael Dolan, Catholic cardinal and archbishop of New York, also stood, and he invoked the divine feminine as he opened the inaugural ceremony with a recitation of King Solomon’s prayer from the Book of Wisdom.
As Dolan stood before the capitol building, which houses the US congress, he called upon the divine feminine with the words: “Now with you is wisdom, who knows your will and was there when you made the world, who understands what is pleasing in your eyes, what is conformable with your commands, send her forth from your holy heavens. From your glorious throne, dispatch her that she may be with us and work with us, that we may grasp what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things and will guide us prudently in our affairs and safeguard us by her glory.”
She is here. Continue reading “She is Here by Mary Petiet”
The day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade took place in Washington, D.C. to demand the attention of the incoming administration and advance the cause of suffrage. Organized primarily by Alice Paul, 8,000 women marched on Washington on March 3, 1913.
Alice Paul is an often overlooked figure in American suffragette history. She’s no longer as common a name as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Her early feminist contemporaries weren’t always very fond of her, for that matter. Many found her “too radical,” especially after her return from training with the British suffragettes, where she was arrested multiple times. But Alice Paul knew how to get things done. Continue reading “Alice Paul & the Women Who Will Keep Marching by Kay Bee”
I always felt curiously distant from the figure of Mary. I always sensed that there is so much there and yet, I could never connect to it emotionally.
The foil to Eve, vessel of Love, suffering mother. I wanted to love her, I wanted to feel her, I wanted to feel drawn to the mystery of Marian devotion. But I felt alienated by the vision of the feminine that she seemed to project: the pure, immaculate, virginal, submissive, obedient, quietly suffering.
Most days, I feel like the opposite of every single one of those qualities.
It’s exactly the kind of feminine archetype I don’t really relate to — the kind of person about whom people say, “oh, she’s really nice” as if yielding compliance and non-offensiveness are her primary attributes. The kind of woman who fades into the background, whose worth lies only in her utility to the patriarchal narrative. Continue reading ““Tricolor Mary: Encountering Three Faces of the Divine Feminine” by Simone Grace Seol”
Ecclesiastes 3:14 – I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all that should stand in awe before him.
Nothing can be added or
taken away…
… then why does it feel like everything is lost?
You haul away the bodies while
we watch
— linking arms
— standing fast
against the tide of
grief that churns until
we can find
a distraction that makes us believe
life will return to
normal
Nothing can be added or
taken away, you say…
Really?
You take away innocence at
the marketplace
— the prices vary by age
— virgins to the highest bidder
Surely, El-roi, you see
— the pain
— the suffering Continue reading “Divine Physics: A Poetic Reflection on Ecclesiastes 3:14 by Lori Stewart”
Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 When Bess was in her fifties, walking past the quarry at sunset—called daylight gate in her dialect—a beautiful young man emerged from the stone pit, his hair golden and shining, his coat half black, half brown. He introduced himself to her as Tibb and promised to be her familiar spirit, her otherworldly companion who would be the power behind her every spell.
Maureen Stopforth who runs the Witches Galore gift shop in Newchurch has warned visitors of a malign energy rising from the quarry but I sense nothing evil, merely a yearning that draws me in deeper until, near the back of the old stone pit, I find a man’s face carved in the rock—the handiwork of some fanciful Victorian who wished to pay tribute to Bess’s Tibb.
Attending a Halloween ghost walk, I bristle as the guide glibly describes Tibb as the “devil in disguise.” From my research, I learned that the devil, as such, appeared to be a minor figure in British witchcraft. Instead the familiar spirit took center stage—the cunning person’s spirit helper who could shape shift between human and animal form. Bess described how her Tibb could appear as a hare, a black cat, or a brown dog. In traditional English folk magic, it seemed that no cunning man or cunning woman could work magic without the aid of their familiar. Continue reading “Mother Demdike, Ancestor of My Heart, Part 3 by Mary Sharratt”
Continued from Part 1. As I sought to uncover the bones of the cunning woman Mother Demdike’s story, I was drawn into a new world of mystery and magic. It was as though Pendle Hill had opened up like an enchanted mountain to reveal the treasures hidden within. Every stereotype I’d held of historical witches and cunning folk was dashed to pieces. Continue reading “Mother Demdike, Ancestor of My Heart, Part 2 by Mary Sharratt”
The morning air is hot around the pillars of Jerusalem stone, but the congregation is already tired. The prayers are old, pro forma and remote, drawing power now from the sound of the Hebrew more than from the meaning of the words. “Thank you for mercifully restoring my soul to me…” intones the small group of gathered men, “and for not making me a woman.”
The voices are smooth and practiced, unmixed with the rustling of pages except for a teenager who cannot recite from memory, whose Hebrew is still bad enough that he has to pay attention. This boy tires of waking, and wonders why God did not make him a woman—why he will never be a thing as close to his maker’s image as a woman seems to him to be. Continue reading “The God of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar by Race MoChridhe”
Feminism and Religion 