Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
My walk to the river
is a joyful entrance
into the eternal Now.
The water flowing,
crushed fresh mint,
trilling bird song
desert air so sweet
my body vibrates
drumming with all that is…
Returning under
the bowing cottonwoods
I touch a heart shaped leaf
in reverence…
For Life. Continue reading “Singing up the Dawn, a poem by Sara Wright”
Borderless Haiku:
We have forgotten the names of each other underneath the shedding skin those names written in our blood that have danced to tonantzin tonatiuh before they knew they were lovers. (IFHL)
Last week I was fortunate to have attended a poetic reading and performance by a remarkably gifted young Mexican man named Israel Francisco Haros Lopez who was born to immigrant parents in Los Angelos. He is both a visual and performance artist, and his work transcends borderlands of all kinds. Israel believes that it is critical to honor and remember the ancestors so that we may once again become one with the winged ones, all those who crawl or walk on this earth, the Four Directions, Earth Air Fire and Water, Tonanztin and Tonatiuh – the Aztec Earth Goddess and the Sun God – Israel’s expression of unity in divinity, and the universe as a whole. His visual motifs are drawn from Pre – Columbian America and his work is an attempt to search for personal truths within the context of today’s world incorporating Mexican/Indigenous stories into the whole.
Continue reading “Israel Francisco Haros Lopez by Sara Wright”
In this remarkable memoir one woman’s life is set in the collective context of the women’s movement as a whole, and through Lise Weil’s eyes we get to see the “both and” quality of her struggle to understand the wound caused by what went wrong not only in her personal relationships with women, but between the powerful women who inspired the women’s movement in the first place. We can only heal this wound personally and collectively if we are willing to self-reflect, ask difficult and painful questions, and take responsibility for our actions, something that the author is willing to do. By addressing our own mother-daughter and woman to woman betrayals, choosing to respect one another’s differences regardless of sexual orientation, color, race, religion etc. we can finally unite with one purpose – to save ourselves and the planet.
What Lise proposes – namely, that Lesbian Visionary Thinking opened the door to women re–imagining women as powerful agents in their own lives even as they became women who acted upon these visions – is, I believe, truth. Lesbian visionaries envisaged a woman centered culture and created one. Many of us realize today that without a feminist standpoint, the ravages of patriarchy are going to destroy us all. We have much to learn from reading this story. Continue reading “Review: In Search of Pure Lust, author Lise Weil by Sara Wright”
Her name is Datura.
Delicate fluted deep-throated trumpets open to
humming honey bees and summer rains.
She communicates through scent.
In the fall I collect her sharp-needled pods.
They rattle like dry bones.
I chill them.
In the spring I coax seeds to sprout
wrapping each in papery white cloth,
sing love songs – siren calls
to rouse each root from winter’s sleep.
I am patient…
a woman in waiting for the heat of the sun
to unfurl the mystery of becoming
that is re-acted in spring.
Only seeds know when to swell and burst.
Continue reading “Emergence: Poem to a Plant Goddess by Sara Wright”
A ‘Nicho‘, is a three-dimensional or recessed area used to honor an important figure, saint, or loved one. Nichos originated as an adaptation of the Roman Catholic ‘retablo‘, painting of a patron saint on wood or tin.
When I was a little girl my parents spent a year in Europe and my mother brought me home a small Greek Orthodox retablo of the Virgin and Child made of silver. It had two small arched doors with tiny nobs that opened onto an etched picture of the Madonna and Child. I placed the retablo on a table next to my bed where it remained throughout my childhood. I opened and closed ornate silvery doors frequently drawn in by something that at the time I couldn’t name. When I became an adult this small silver story moved from night table to table in each house I lived in for about 45 years. Continue reading “Nichos Embody Natural Grace by Sara Wright”
In folklore Old women are believed to control all aspects of Nature – Fire, Earth, Air and Water, but in myth and story they have a special relationship with water.
The title “witches in the weeds” emerged after I did some research on the Datura plant. This plant is usually associated with old women and sorcery in myth and story. For example, in European mythology, the dark goddesses, Hecate, and Baba Yaga are associated with Datura. Datura is considered to be a ‘witch weed’ and is categorized as a poison along with deadly nightshade, henbane and mandrake. The seeds and flowers have a history of creating visions, delirious states, and causing death. Datura thrives in wilderness areas. Old women, dark goddesses and Datura have a lot in common.
Women and birds have been associated since Neolithic times. Scholar and mytho-archeologist Marija Gimbutas unearthed many bird-women sculptures that were fashioned out of clay in “Old Europe”. Old women in particular are most often associated with owls, herons, crows, ravens, and black birds of all kinds. It is probably the relationship between women and birds that is one of the roots behind the belief that old women can fly. The other root behind flight can probably be found in the relationship between women healers and the plants they used. Plants like Datura contain alkaloid properties (scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine) that are capable of producing visions of flight and are used by folk healers and medicine women and men. Continue reading ” Witches in the Weeds by Sara Wright”
They came from
Life giving Waters,
emerging from a Lake
at the Beginning of time.
Avanyu –
Serpent,
Spirit of the River
pecked into stone
or painted
on canyon walls
embodies their story.
The Tewa settled above
the Great River Banks.
Roaring water flowed
through tributaries
mountain gorges.
The People gave thanks.
Water meant Life.
Each village was the center
of the Tewa’s First world.
Bound together by
Women who tended
holy household shrines,
prayed for rain,
created fires,
gathered seed,
ground food,
grew babies,
dug clay to shape
earthen pots.
This was the Second world
of the Tewa.
How do we respect materialistic/mechanistic science – the myth of our time – when it continues to use non-human sentient beings for it’s own gain?
How do we respect religions for the harm or damage that these beliefs may cause for animals, plants and people who live on the Earth?
These are important questions, and for me the two are intimately related. Science and religion are two lenses humans use to perceive the world. Continue reading “Querying in the Context of Religion and Science by Sara Wright”
Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break.
I remember so vividly entering graduate school in my early forties and being told I was an “eco – feminist” by my professors. What does that phrase mean I asked having no relationship that I knew of to feminism. Feminists, I thought vaguely, naively, even stupidly, burned bras and hated men…
I was asked to read “Woman and Nature; The Roaring Inside Her” by Susan Griffin to help me see who I was, and after finishing this one book I submerged myself in feminist writings like a starved woman – child. My teachers were right. I was a feminist – an eco –feminist because I had already made the connection between what was happening to the Earth and what had happened to me. Every tree that was chopped down was a part of me, every stream that was polluted was a part of me, every animal that was slaughtered was a part of me because I was a part of Nature. I owed my life to Nature, the only mother I had ever had. I loved Her, honored her, became her fierce advocate and in the process She eventually taught me to love myself.
Continue reading “Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright”
A couple of days ago I was climbing a mesa with my friend Iren who is “a guide to the wild places” – those places off the beaten track where stories are told by the stones and the Earth that supports them.
As a severely directionally dyslexic person who cannot tell her left from right navigating this hidden world would be impossible without Iren’s deep knowledge of this land, her expertise, her extraordinary sensitivity and her love for Nature. No words can ever express my gratitude for this friendship without which I would feel bereft.
As we climbed through mountains of human garbage and four wheeler tracks we discovered potsherds at our feet. Picking up the predominantly black and white pieces for inspection I found myself wondering about the women (and children) who gathered the clay, shaped it into pots, and fired the vessels to store food. There are so many untold women’s stories hidden in these clay fragments… Continue reading “Stories the Stones Tell by Sara Wright”
Feminism and Religion 