Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

As we careen toward ever more terrifying surges in the Covid pandemic, with experts predicting apocalyptic catastrophes by Christmas time, I find myself reacting to the vast majority of modern Christmas songs, stories, movies, and cultural norms with increasing distaste. In these scary, painful weeks leading up to Christmas, my culture has very little to offer other than distraction and superficial jollity. Ho ho ho, Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

Distraction does help, a little. It’s addictive, of course. We turn more and more to social media, with its carefully designed dopamine boosts from each “like” and “love” reaction, each funny cat video, each smug political joke, to keep us from confronting the terror and trauma of our current reality. It’s a legitimate coping mechanism, a crutch that can be useful in many ways. Continue reading “Sappy modern carols won’t cut it; Gritty Advent Hope is what we need this year. — by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Week 4 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

If you have not yet realized that the Christmas story is a story of liberation from oppression, it is time to realize that. I like to dust off the patriarchy and misogyny of scriptural writers to find the beautiful wisdom within the stories and songs. Here is my daily devotional for the third week of Advent, the week of Love. May our ever-birthing Goddess guide you to recognize and birth Joy, with all Creation. As the sky turns dark, may our candles shine ever brighter, together. Continue reading “Week 4 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Ah, Christmas. So nostalgic. So sentimental. Fat, fluffy sheep. Singing angels. The ‘little Lord Jesus,’ asleep on the hay. Happy sigh.

Except… well, except that no matter the candlelit warm glow, the truth is that the communities who wrote the birth narratives about Jesus of Nazareth never intended them to be sentimental at all. They were meant to point toward his prophetic ministry of anti-imperialism and justice for oppressed and impoverished communities, a ministry that ended in torture and execution – and yet nonetheless insisted upon the resilience of hope, peace, even joy in the midst of gruesome, relentless violence. So… what happened? What… weakened Christmas?

I’ve been mulling this idea over many an Advent. Of course, when the Roman Empire tried to neutralize the Christian movement, adopting it as the Imperial Religion and making it over in its own image, the radical and transformative message was forced to move underground and to the margins. We all sort of understand how political power manipulates religious and secular ideologies for its own oppressive purposes, throughout human history and today. Continue reading “Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

Week 3 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

If you have not yet realized that the Christmas story is a story of liberation from oppression, it is time to realize that. I like to dust off the patriarchy and mysogyny of scriptural writers to find the beautiful wisdom within the stories and songs. Here is my daily devotional for the third week of Advent, the week of Joy. May our ever-birthing Goddess guide you to recognize and birth Joy, with all Creation. As the sky turns dark, may our candles shine ever brighter, together.

 

Feminist Advent Devotional, Day 15:

Isaiah 35 (NRSV, revised)

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Womb,
the majesty of Gaia.

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
‘Be strong, do not fear!
Here are your kindred.
We will come with compassion,
with holy power.
We will all heal and lift each other.’

Then the wounds of the sufferers shall be healed,
and the griefs of the broken-hearted be comforted
then the fainting ones shall leap like deer,
and the tongues of the mourners sing for joy.
For waters of new birth shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the greedy shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for the kindred of Gaia;
no traveller, not even infants, shall go astray.
No robber shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous ruler come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the kindred shall walk there.

And the kin-dom of Gaia shall return,
and come to each other with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Continue reading “Week 3 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

On My Invitation as a Jew to Participate in Advent and Christmas by Ivy Helman.

imageI attend Czech classes twice a week.  This time of year the courses focus on Christmas.  I’ve attended three different schools over the last five years, and all handle Christmas similarly.  Even though the Czech Republic is only marginally Christian, for many Czechs being Czech and observing Christmas seem to go hand-in-hand.  In fact, Czech customs around Christmas even figure into the citizenship exam.

In last Tuesday’s class, my teacher asked me how I celebrate Christmas here.  She knows I’m Jewish.  When I said that I don’t observe Christmas traditions in my home, she responded, “you don’t have to be a believer to do Advent-related and Christmasy things.  Only 20% of Czechs are, and yet we all participate in Advent and Christmas.” It was part invitation, part assimilation request.  However, the excited in-class discussion felt more like an attempt at conversion. Don’t you want to be a part of this amazingly joyful time?   Continue reading “On My Invitation as a Jew to Participate in Advent and Christmas by Ivy Helman.”

Week 2 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

If you have not yet realized that the Christmas story is a story of liberation from oppression, it is time to realize that. I like to dust off the patriarchy and mysogyny of scriptural writers to find the beautiful wisdom within the stories. Here is my daily devotional for the second week of Advent, the week of Peace. May our ever-birthing Goddess guide you to recognize and birth Peace, with all Creation. As the sky turns dark, may our candles shine ever brighter, together.


Feminist Advent Daily Devotional, Day 8:


The Peaceful Kin-dom

New shoots shall grow out from the stumps of old trees,

and branches shall grow out of their roots.

The spirit of Eternal Becoming rests on young prophets of Goddess,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the reverence of Gaia.

Their delight shall be in the reverence of Gaia.

They shall not judge by the diseased eyes of their culture,

or decide by the distorted ears of falseness or deceit;

but with righteousness they shall proclaim justice for the poor,

and bring abundance to the meek of the earth;

they shall heal the earth with the birth canals of their mouths,

and with the breath of their lips they shall redeem the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt around their waists,

and faithfulness the belt around their wombs.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little girl shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put her hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Eternal Womb

as her waters cover the sea.

Continue reading “Week 2 – Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Week 1 Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

If you have not yet realized that the Christmas story is a story of liberation from oppression, it is time to realize that. I like to dust off the patriarchy and mysogyny of scriptural writers to find the beautiful wisdom within the stories. Here is my daily devotional for the first week of Advent, the week of Hope. May our ever-birthing Goddess guide you to recognize and birth Hope, with all Creation. As the sky turns dark, may our candles shine ever brighter, together.

Feminist Advent Devotional, Day 1:

Isaiah 2:1-5, revised

The word that Isaiah, daughter of Amoz, saw concerning the kindred of faithful seekers.

In days to come the mountain of Peace shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all Creation shall stream to it.

Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Peace, to the house of Love and Justice; that we may learn her Wisdom and that we may walk in her paths.” For out of Gaia shall go forth instruction, and the Wisdom of the Eternal Womb from the Earth Mother.

She shall guide all Creation, and shall reconcile all the Earth; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

O kindred of faithful seekers, come, let us walk in the light of Hope!

Continue reading “Week 1 Goddess Birthing Liberation: A Feminist Advent Daily Devotional by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri

Frau Holda Poem

Hail to Frau Holda, the beautiful and bright,
Crowned and clothed, all in glistening Winter white.
Ay seeking and searching, She sweeps o’er the land,
Scourge for the slovenly, held firmly in hand.
As Holda fares forth, with Her own Holy Host,
May She deem distaffs full, befitting a Yule boast.
For when all is cleanly, content She shall be,
Thus Her bedding she flaps, with a whirlwind flurry.
Soon crisp snowflakes, come falling feather light,
Cleverly She shakes, cloaking the clutter with white.
‘Til Earth is enclosed, by a fine fluffy down,
A bedecked beauty, in Her sparkling snow gown.
Heed well and hear, when Holda’s housework doth end,
A faint satisfied sigh, for the mess Frau did mend.
© Rhonda Turner

 

Once I became a mother I found the demands as well as my own expectations for holiday gifting, decor and celebrations to be SO taxing that I quickly felt a bit of resentment toward Santa Claus for getting all of the credit. Now I tell my children that Santa Goddess is posing as homekeeping MRS. CLAUSE and that SHE and the elves do all of the work, and that “Santa” is merely their courier. Engulfed in modern society, I don’t think my young children hear me as they still dance with glee at any mention of Santa Claus.

Continue reading “The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri”

Another Season of Reflection and Review by Elise M. Edwards

elise-edwardsI turn inward and become reflective at this time of year.  It’s the Advent season in the Christian liturgical year, which encourages practices of piety focused on preparation, examination, and hopeful longing.  It’s the end of a semester and a calendar year, which provokes review of the months before.  In the northern hemisphere, it’s a time of darker days and longer nights, which suggest a retreat indoors, in silence or in stillness.

During this time of year, I’m typically exhausted, and so I seem to enact annual rituals with a recurring sense of ambivalence.   I really love the celebration of Christmas, but preparing for it takes a lot of energy.  So I do some decorating, but not as much as I planned.  I attend some parties and celebrations, but end up missing or cancelling others.  I start a new devotional book, only to set it aside within a week or so.  I want this time of year to be both reflective and celebratory.  I want it to be spiritual and religious.  I want to be sociable with friends and family and also find time to rest and recover in solitude.  At some point, those goals seem too contradictory to be realizable and then I start practical negotiations:  How much decorating will I do? What kind of time will I set aside for solitude and self-care?  Will I have enough energy to be joyful and present with my family and friends?

“Some, but not enough” is the answer I seem to come to every year.

Some decorating, but not enough.  Some time for solitude and self-care, but not enough.  Some energy for social occasions, but not enough.  This year, I want to let go of that voice that says it’s not enough.  That voice that says I am not enough.

To help myself let go of the guilt and self-deprecation, while retaining the reflective focus of the season that may be life-affirming, I reviewed my previous years’ December writings on this blog.  What might I discern from this pattern of yearly reflection?

In 2012, I wrote about why women might be tempted to cancel Christmas.  I was in my final year of the Ph.D. program when I wrote that, and was prompted to do so when I heard that friends and colleagues were planning to skip Christmas preparations or scale them back dramatically.  That year, I sought to maintain “religious and social rituals associated with Christmas” so that I could be “spiritually grounded, emotionally provoked, mentally rested, and physically fed.” I don’t have a vivid memory of that year’s holidays, but as I read it again, I wonder if I was carrying a sense of religious obligation rather than release.  Did I feel free or beholden to social custom? I’ve learned that I will only be able to let that “not enough” voice go when I let go of the expectation that Advent and Christmas should look a certain way or I should be present to it in a certain way.  I’m more willing this year to let peace and joy ebb and flow  in celebrations and moments of sadness and mourning that accompany the season, too.

In 2014 and 2016, my Advent reflections were more focused on justice and peace at the societal level than in the household.  They were mournful.  In December 2014, I was trying to stave off despair after Michael Brown’s killer was not indicted by a grand jury.  The police officer would not stand trial for killing the black teen.  That year, I was mourning Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin and the loss of my own naivete as I became more conscientized about racial violence. I had a similar wake-up call last year when Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the US presidential election and I working through the anger and dread I felt at 45’s approaching presidency.  This year, the struggle continues as we anticipate changes to the tax code and DACA.  But at least Roy Moore lost.  We do continue to work for progress and systemic change, and sometimes, it works.

Feminists have long asserted that the personal is political and that the political is personal.  I’m acknowledging this holiday season that my perpetual weariness during Advent and Christmas is legitimate, as it emerges from personal and political struggle.  I am frustrated with the injustices and hardships I encounter at home, work, and the broader community.  I would not be weary if I was not awakened to the suffering.  This year, I accept that the exhaustion is part of the cost of my work and my calling.  The weariness will ebb and flow, as will joy and peace. Being able to teach and write is a blessing that allows me to help others become more aware of injustice and more involved in addressing it.  This year, I’m acknowledging that I’ve done what I can do.  I’m resisting the impulse to assess whether it was enough.  In previous years, I’ve been trying to hold on to hope; this year I’m resting in God’s grace.

As Christmas approaches, I’m embracing the Christian teaching that the divine meets humanity where we are.  The beauty of the Incarnation is that the eternal meets the temporal and that God unites with human to bring light to a suffering world.  That’s a gift for me this year, a comfort to be able to shift the focus from my own action and being to divine action and being.

I can see the sacred work and presence in this online community and other communities of faith.  Holiday blessings to you all.

Elise M. Edwards, PhD is a Lecturer in Christian Ethics at Baylor University and a graduate of Claremont Graduate University. She is also a registered architect in the State of Florida. Her interdisciplinary work examines issues of civic engagement and how beliefs and commitments are expressed publicly. As a black feminist, she primarily focuses on cultural expressions by, for, and about women and marginalized communities. Follow her on twitter, google+ or academia.edu.

A Winter Woman by Molly Remer

“When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive…

Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future.”

–Patricia Monaghan, Seasons of the Witch

When the wheel of the year turns to winter, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for significant de-cluttering—my eyes cast about the house for things to unload, get rid of, to cast away. I also search my calendar for those things which can be eliminated, trimmed down, cut back on. I think it is the inexorable approach of the winter holidays that prompts this desire to withdraw, as well as the natural rhythm of the earth which so clearly says: let things go, it is almost time to hibernate.

This shift toward winter is a time of discernment. A time to choose. A time to notice that which has not made it through the summer’s heat and thus needs to be pruned away. In this time of the year, we both recognize the harvest of our labors and that which needs to be released or even sacrificed as we sense the promise of the new year to come. Continue reading “A Winter Woman by Molly Remer”

Depicting Mary by Natalie Weaver

In October I had the opportunity to travel to the Louvre Museum on a free day I had from a conference I was attending in Leuven, Belgium.  I went predisposed to consider images of the Madonna as I had been thinking about her representations in art for some time.  In my own painting, I have been developing a version of the Annunciation that depicts Mary as a teenage girl reading a pregnancy test.  Her fear and consternation, coupled by the shock of the event of learning of her pregnancy strikes me as a more accessible telling of the true vulnerability and risk of the unwed child Mary than classic depictions of Mary as a reclining queenly figure quietly receiving the angel’s message.  I likewise had been working on a wood burnt figure of a Black Madonna as a study in both icon making and also understanding the tradition of Black Madonnas found throughout Eastern Europe.

I am deeply aware that representing this figure is a culturally laden task because the Madonna speaks both to some of the deepest spiritual needs and inclinations of many faithful Christians world over, just as she is almost shorthand for division among Christian communities.  Her presentation is tremendously political as it is received by fans and critics simultaneously as at once championing women (and the divine within women) and also condemning real women whose maternity and bodies can never be as morally or physically pristine as Mary’s.  Mary’s skin, clothing, age, gesturing, posture, gaze, and more speak volumes about the social location of her patrons and creators as well as the manner in which the viewer is being invited to receive her.

Continue reading “Depicting Mary by Natalie Weaver”

Holy Women Icons Bearing the Light of Advent by Angela Yarber

There’s nothing like the holiday season to bring out everyone’s least feminist self. In one of the courses that I teach—Gender, Food, and the Body in Popular Culture—students are assigned to examine gender roles throughout the holiday season through the lens intersectional ecofeminism. Inevitably, almost every student returns from holiday break with the same assessment: mom, grandma, and a kitchen full of women prepare, cook, and clean every family meal; women do the holiday shopping; men in the family watch sports. Of course, this isn’t true of everyone. There are plenty of families who subvert and dismantle stereotypical gender roles, but the holidays seem to heighten these roles, undergirding them with some kind of nostalgic and theological weight that claims that if mama doesn’t arduously prepare her famed casserole, the season will be ruined. Otherwise committed feminists find themselves singing carols filled with sexist language and participating in holiday rituals that they would critique any other time of the year. Subversion be damned because we want our traditional family holiday!

I’ve long struggled with creative ways to subversively approach the holidays as a queer clergywoman, parent, artist, and author. People like their nostalgic and heart-warming traditions, even when they sometimes smack of patriarchy, racism, and heteronormativity. I’ve confronted this as a preacher and worship planner, often to raised eyebrows or angry phone calls from congregants who just want to sing the carols without the preacher changing the words, or dismissing the notion of a virgin birth, or hanging enormous paintings of pregnant women all over the sanctuary.

Continue reading “Holy Women Icons Bearing the Light of Advent by Angela Yarber”

Making Room for Joy this Advent by Katey Zeh

cwico_oeuis-nikola-jelenkovicDriving around my town in North Carolina, I have come across a handful of houses that had decorated their yards with an empty manger staged in front of an empty cross. This juxtaposition of Christian symbols struck me as peculiar, so I began asking some of my friends if they had ever come across a display like this.

My Catholic friends were helpful in understanding the empty manger, which I could recall having seen previously. Traditionally Catholics wait until the Christmas midnight mass to place the baby Jesus in the manger. If Advent is a season of expectation of the Christ child, this liturgical practice makes sense. But what about the cross behind it?

I believe this stark manager and cross scene was intended to emphasize a theology centered around atonement: Jesus was born, so that he could die and save humanity. These combined symbols are somber reminders to all who drive by of our own sinfulness and need for salvation. I’m intimately familiar with this particular understanding of Christianity, so this wasn’t surprising.

But still, I find myself deeply saddened by this display of the empty and isolated symbols. Continue reading “Making Room for Joy this Advent by Katey Zeh”

Moving Forward and into a New Season by Elise M. Edwards

elise-edwardsIt’s only been a month and I am still reeling from the US presidential election.  I feel like I’m just beginning to emerge from the sense of loss and futility that has cloaked me.  But I am beginning to move forward.

I don’t feel better.  I’m still confused and discouraged about why people voted for Donald Trump.  I’m very concerned about his cabinet picks and his proposed policies.  But I am actively seeking a path forward and a path of resistance.  I’m finding support in my spiritual practices and communities.

In the Christian calendar, we are in the season of Advent.  Advent carries profound symbolism, and this year it is especially poignant for me.  The word advent bears meanings of arrival, birth, and emergence.  It’s the beginning of the Christian year, which is patterned on the life of Christ, but the year does not begin Jesus’ birth.  That celebration is observed at Christmas, four weeks into the church year.  The weeks preceding Christmas are a time of preparation and reflection on the need for the Incarnation.  The Incarnation of God in the Christ Child may be a distinctly Christian doctrine, but I believe the need for it–even the idea of it–is found in other spiritual and religious teachings.

Continue reading “Moving Forward and into a New Season by Elise M. Edwards”

Be Still by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver editedBe still, and know that I am God.

During this season of Advent, I have found great comfort in one biblical passage, Psalm 46:10, which translates as “Be still, and know that I am God.”  

I take comfort here, when the rest fails me.  I find myself, especially during this season, often unable to pray in the way I think prayer is supposed to be offered.  Even though I know quiet, non-cognitive prayer that thrums like one’s heartbeat is as legitimate as a dozen rosaries or impassioned petitions, I sometimes struggle to affirm myself in this.  Like many academic theologians, I get lost in my mind that knows too many critiques, deconstructions, and rational responses.  I teach on the theology of suffering, and I spend hours every week with spiritual caregivers, healthcare providers, funeral directors, and chaplains, who discuss hospice, childhood cancers, car accidents, and stunning grief.   I teach on pastoral care, spirituality, and addiction, where we explore the complicated nature of hope in the face of largely hopeless circumstances.  I am not sure I ever believed in miracles or lucky rabbit feet.  I am in equal parts terrified and dumbfounded by humanity’s divine pleas that go unanswered. I am, in addition to a dozen other descriptors, depending on the time of day, a critical realist, an empiricist, a stoic, perhaps an epicurean, definitely an existentialist, and, Lord, have mercy, a feminist.   Prayer in both traditional ecclesial and fiery personal senses often struggles in this company. Continue reading “Be Still by Natalie Weaver”

A Small Glimpse Into God’s Creation, In a Window by Karen Leslie Hernandez

karen hernandezWindows. We have windows everywhere. In our homes, stores, cars, buildings, our souls. Windows allow us to see in, see out, and reflect. We see ourselves, others, creation.

This Autumn, I began a new job at the San Francisco SPCA, thanks to my daughter who also works at the SF SPCA as a Vet Tech. First things first – I love this job! As I pursue my Doctor of Ministry with a concentration in restorative justice and domestic violence advocacy, which includes me tutoring women in prison every week, and as I continue my work as an interfaith activist in this religiously and politically charged environment we are in right now, I wanted a job I had never done before, and more, a job that would bring me joy. So, I was offered and accepted a job doing adoptions at the SF SPCA – not just at the adoption center, but at Macy’s.

For the past 30 years, the SF SPCA has adopted out animals at several department stores during the holiday season in San Francisco, with Macy’s being their primary partnership for over the last decade. Known as Holiday Windows, every year, over 200 kittens and puppies are adopted out of the Macy’s windows alone, bringing happiness and a lot fur to people’s homes.

I love being a part of this event. Taking care of more than a dozen kittens and several puppies a day isn’t always easy, but, it makes me smile. All the time. And, it’s difficult to explain the feeling when you see people outside who walk up to the windows and see kittens and puppies who are up for adoption. They melt, they smile, they ask questions, and they appreciate the work the SF SPCA is doing.

For me, this job has an even deeper meaning. As a native to the Bay Area, being born in San Francisco, I have a different history with the Macy’s windows, that goes back to when I was a kid. Whenever I went to the City with my Mom, I couldn’t wait to hang out under the Macy’s window with a homeless man named John, and his dog Snoopy. Continue reading “A Small Glimpse Into God’s Creation, In a Window by Karen Leslie Hernandez”

Painting Our Lady of Light: Winter Holidays 2016 by Angela Yarber

angelaThere’s nothing like the holiday season to bring out everyone’s least feminist self. In one of the courses that I teach—Gender, Food, and the Body in Popular Culture—students are assigned to examine gender roles throughout the holiday season through the lens intersectional ecofeminism. Inevitably, almost every student returns from holiday break with the same assessment: mom, grandma, and a kitchen full of women prepare, cook, and clean every family meal; women do the holiday shopping; men in the family watch sports.

Of course, this isn’t true of everyone. There are plenty of families which subvert and dismantle stereotypical gender roles, but the holidays seem to heighten these roles, undergirding them with some kind of nostalgic and theological weight that claims that if mama doesn’t arduously prepare her famed casserole, the season will be ruined. Otherwise committed feminists find themselves singing carols filled with sexist language and participating in holiday rituals that they would critique any other time of the year. Subversion be damned because we want our traditional family holiday! Continue reading “Painting Our Lady of Light: Winter Holidays 2016 by Angela Yarber”

What If Jesus Had Gone to Daycare? by Katey Zeh

Screenshot 2015-12-08 09.47.34

As a maternal health advocate, I cherish the season of Advent as an opportunity to connect a beloved Christian story to the lives of women today who struggle to bring new life into the world under horrific circumstances. Every year I write something about Mary’s pregnancy and birth. In many ways she is no different from the “Marys” around the world who are young, poor, and unexpectedly pregnant, and who go on to give birth in unclean environments. I often pose the question to communities of faith, wasn’t the Christmas miracle equally that Mary survived the birth? How different would Jesus’s life have been if he’d never known his mother?

I continue asking these questions, but after my daughter was born last October, I have found my Advent reflections shifting to mirror my own parenting experiences. I began to think beyond Mary’s birth and into her early months of motherhood. One morning last December, after a particularly awful night’s sleep, I came downstairs to hear “Away in a Manger” playing on the radio. When it got to the line “But little Lord Jesus/No crying he makes,” I rolled my eyes dramatically and pictured Mary doing the same as she bounced a screaming baby Jesus in her arms. Continue reading “What If Jesus Had Gone to Daycare? by Katey Zeh”

A Prayer for our Troubled Times By Grace Yia-Hei Kao

Grace KaoA few days ago, I received a private message from an old friend who’s now living and working in Taiwan. We hadn’t corresponded in years, but he had heard about the recent shootings in San Bernardino and wanted to check-in after realizing that this was second set of mass shootings that I’d experienced so close to home (i.e., I live in a city just west of San Bernardino County and was faculty at Virginia Tech in 2007 during what became known as the deadliest shooting by a lone gunman in U.S history).

Continue reading “A Prayer for our Troubled Times By Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Painting Aurora by Angela Yarber

angelaFor those of us in the northern hemisphere, December is one of the darkest months. The days are shorter. Night comes earlier. Each morning I eagerly await the dawn, the potential sliver of sunshine seeping through my window and warming my otherwise cold wintery skin. For those of us who struggle with seasonal depression, December can be difficult. The colder and shorter days cast shadows on our spirits as we yearn for the warm glow of light. Each December as we inch toward the winter solstice, I am reminded of the Goddess of the Dawn, Aurora, and of the unique ways in which a variety of wisdom traditions invoke the coming of light amidst the stark December night skies.

So, this December I welcome Aurora into the vast witness of Holy Women Icon with a folk feminist twist that I feature each month: Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, Jephthah’s daughter, Anna Julia Cooper, the Holy Woman Icon archetype, Maya Angelou, Martha Graham, Pauli Murray, La Negrita, Tiamat/tehom, Mother Teresa, and many others.

Aurora is the Goddess of the dawn in Roman mythology; each morning she soars across the sky to announce the arrival of the sun. As the nights grow longer and longer, I can think of few other goddesses I hope for more than Aurora. In fact, many faith traditions invoke the coming of light during this month of long nights and short days.

In my own tradition, we are not yet celebrating Christmas (despite the capitalist consumer onslaught that has been on full throttle since October). Rather, we still dwell in the deep blue darkness of Advent, when we wait, long, and prepare for light to be birthed into our world. For most Christians, a candle is lit each Sunday during Advent and the light grows brighter as they anticipate the birth of Christ. Continue reading “Painting Aurora by Angela Yarber”

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