To be in the presence of antiquities is powerful. They carry an energy which is palpable. I found this to be true at the recent exhibit at the Morgan Library in Manhattan that ran from October 14, 2022 through February 19, 2023.
Enheduanna is a fascinating woman who lived in the lands of Mesopotamia circa the 23rd century BCE. She was a priestess who was also a writer and chronicler of her times. She named herself in her writings making her the first known author of any written works in history. She was so influential that for centuries after her death, scribes learned their craft in scribal schools by reading and copying out her work. Scholars have referred to her as the Sumerian Shakespeare[1]
Her main temple was in Ur, the very city that hundreds of years later gave rise to the biblical priestess Sarah and her husband, Abraham. We can only image how much they had been influenced by her.
kikuchi valley, waterfall and light lay in the forest, kikuchi, kumamoto, japan
Today is the day in the Christian church year that we remember Jesus’ last supper with his friends/chosen family before he was betrayed by some of those same friends/chosen family. He talked to his beloved circle that night about many things, including betrayal and their capacity to embody Divine Love in a broken world after his death. Just a few days later he was executed by the Roman government because his prophetic and compassionate life was a threat to the powers that be of his day–both governmental and religious. In honor of this day in my faith tradition, I share a poem I wrote about one of the women in Jesus’ life before he was executed by Empire. Since Jesus’ death, he was kidnapped again by multiple Empires who have used him to put an ecclesial and even divine seal of approval on systems of oppression and genocide. The woman at the well gives us a window into Jesus the liberator. May we have space to remember him today as another Easter Sunday approaches for Christians around the world.
In this article I reframe my understanding of feminism through the lens of Mona Chollet’s In Defence of Witches, and reflect on how my psyche as a woman today is still deeply influenced by the effects of the witch hunts in mediaeval times.
My recent discovery of Marija Gimbutas on Youtube rekindled my admiration for her work. In her slide-lecture “The World of the Goddess” Marija Gimbutas allows us to follow the line of reasoning she used to decipher the “language of the Goddess” in Old Europe.
Careful attention to her lecture shows that Gimbutas did not close her eyes, dream, and then attach her own ideas and intuitions to the artifacts she later discussed. Rather, she catalogued groups of images with similar symbolism and used her knowledge of nature (what does a water bird or an owl look like?) and folklore (she collected thousands of songs connected to the agricultural and life cycles in her native Lithuania in the 1930s) to unlock the meaning of ancient symbols.
The image of the baby born under the rubble of the earthquake in Syria has been haunting me. So has the image in my mind of her mother, giving birth to her baby while trapped after the building, where she, her husband, and their children were sleeping, collapsed. The baby’s uncle, when digging through the debris hoping to reach his brother and family, found the baby alive, her umbilical cord still attached to her mother. When he cut the cord, the baby let out a cry. Tragically, her mother had died after giving birth, as had her father and siblings.
Imbolc has come and gone. It appears that Punxsutawney Phil, the American version of animal weather prophets on that cross-quarter day, was correct. Winter cold continues. I’ll admit that I am getting pretty tired of the cold but it does help me to keep focused on the paintings for my winter fairytale – Elena and the Reindeer Goddess.
Though my work on this project will certainly continue into the spring and summer, this will be the last excerpt I post here at FAR. I know you will all be more interested in postings related to the growing times of spring and summer once the days are longer and warmer. This third excerpt picks up where my post from last month stopped. If you missed excerpts one and two you can check them out here and here.
The multiverse as a metaphor for trauma is rather compelling to me. It speaks to the way in which different realities and experiences impose themselves on others as a matter of fact rather than malintent. These realities necessarily co-exist in interrelationship but may compound the weight and confusion of present experience.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
Everything.
Everywhere.
All at Once.
I remember thinking, this is kind of a weird name for a movie, even if it is about the multiverse and shifting realities. But I’m a big sci fi fan, so of course, I jumped at the chance to see it when my friend said she wanted to see the movie, again, with me specifically. Mom’s day out for both of us. Check. A… m.o.v.i.e. I remember movies from a time pre-pandemic: there’s a big screen, right? And food? I like food. Sign me up. (j/k). I seem to remember movie theaters being more crowded though—my friend and I had almost a private viewing. And sitting practically on top of my friend by the end of the film, after laughing so hard I cried, crying because I was so sad, gaping in shock, horror, and even disgust, and wondering what I just saw, I reflected: this movie was perfectly named.
My daughters came to me after Sunday School one day, concerned about a story they had heard in which God drowned almost everyone on Earth. So I sat down and thought about why a community might want to tell that story, and what valuable wisdom might be lifted from it for my children. Here is what I told them:
God/ess has many faces, which help us understand different things we need to know at different times. Sometimes we think of God/ess as Crone, an old, old woman crowned with silver hair as an emblem of her wisdom, who helps us learn to let go of anything that is holding back the wellness of our community and ourselves.
Moderator’s Note: This was originally posted on September 19, 2016
Max Dashu’s Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion 700-1000challenges the assumption that Europe was fully Christianized within a few short centuries as traditional historians tell us. Most of us were taught not only that Europe became Christian very rapidly, but also that Europeans were more than willing to adopt a new religion that was “superior” to “paganism” in every way. Careful readers of Dashu’s important new work will be challenged to revise their views. When the full 15 volumes of the projected series are in print, historians may be forced to hang their heads in shame. This of course assumes that scholars will read Dashu’s work. More likely they will ignore or dismiss it, but sooner or later–I dare to hope–the truth will out.
History has been written by the victors—in the case of Europe by elite Christian men. These men may have wanted to believe that their views were widely held, but Dashu suggests that they were not. Combing artistic and archaeological records, Dashu finds (to give one example) that images of Mother Earth nursing a snake are far from uncommon and can even be found as illustrations in Christian documents and on Christian monuments. Clerics rage against people—particularly women–who continue to visit holy wells and sacred trees and to practice divination and healing rituals invoking pagan powers. To paraphrase Shakespeare: “Methinks the cleric doth protest too much.” Were these things not happening and happening often, there would have been no need to condemn them. Using these clues, Dashu provides intriguing new readings of the Poetic Edda and Norse sagas.
Jewish amuletic objects come in many forms: salt, the hamsa or hand, the bowl, the scroll with verses, even sword-shaped amulets. These items are meant to provide spiritual protection from malevolent forces such as demons and the evil eye and vary across different times and places. One protective item from Jewish folklore is iron. In medieval Germany, for example, pregnant Jewish women carried an iron object to repel malevolent forces. This was part of a wider cultural norm: across Western Europe, iron was understood to repel fairies and spirits of all kinds, and was sewed into babies’ clothing, hung above cradles and doorways, etc. According to one Jewish legend, when the waters of Egypt turned to blood during the first plague, water in metal vessels was 34245 the only water to remain unchanged. Pieces of iron were placed on all vessels containing water during the solstices and equinoxes—considered to be a time when spirits were roving the world—to protect them from contamination.
We have all been horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine as we witness the brutal bombardment of not only military sites but also of civilians, neighborhoods, hospitals, churches, historical sites and nuclear power plants. It has been called the first TicToc war as these images fill up our computers and cellphones, leaving peace lovers challenged to maintain their belief in peaceful resolutions to conflict
In recent days I have been pondering the fact that some people and some feminists seem to see the issues of religious faith and belonging to be rooted in birth, family, and community, while for others the question of belonging to a religious community hinges on belief and judgments about the power exerted by religious institutions. What accounts for this difference in the way we view religious belonging?
Recently I watched The Secret History of Sex, Choice and Catholics, a film featuring Roman Catholic feminists and ethicists who dissent from the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s views on contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. At the beginning of the film those interviewed state almost univocally that for them being Catholic stems from having been born Catholic. These Catholic dissidents continue as Catholics, even though they disagree with major portions of Roman Catholic teaching. It may have been because they were not asked, but most of them did not name reasons of belief for remaining Catholic.
Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died from cancer in July, 2021. Her work continues through her non-profit foundation, the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. To honor her legacy, as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs, we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted February 10, 2014. You can read it long with its original comments here.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty little maids all in a row.
From the beginning of horticulture about 8000 BCE or earlier to the present day, weeding has been women’s work. Women, who were the gatherers and preparers of food in traditional nomadic societies, no doubt were the first to discover that seeds dropped at a campsite one year sometimes sprung up as plants the next year. When this discovery was systematized, agriculture was invented, and human beings began to settle down in the first villages and towns.
Your ex-boyfriend gave you a solid brass Buddha, one foot high. You hate to think what he had to pay for it. Not knowing what else to do with it, you place it on your bookcase. You must admit that it’s a beautiful object, that it inspires a certain peace. But it leaves you cold, just like the crucifix hanging in your parents’ bedroom always left you cold.
Your ex-boyfriend gave you a solid brass Buddha, one foot high. You hate to think what he had to pay for it. Not knowing what else to do with it, you place it on your bookcase. You must admit that it’s a beautiful object, that it inspires a certain peace. But it leaves you cold, just like the crucifix hanging in your parents’ bedroom always left you cold. Only when you sit in your dead grandmother’s chair and rock yourself into a trance can you reach your world of wonder, that green and gold place where May sunshine washes through newly unfurled birch leaves, where shadow and light dance on the white bark you peel off like onionskin. Long ago, you think, people worshipped their ancestors.
You wake up to cold and gray, to a day so drab that it hurts like a permanent migraine. On the bus ride to the office, the commuters in their career clothes are scrying into their phones. No free seats so you grab the handrail and gaze out the window. Instead of city buildings and dirty snow, you see an old farmhouse at the edge of an apple orchard. A gaggle of geese guards that house. They rush towards you, flapping their wings and hissing. But you walk resolutely on until you reach the veranda, and then the front door, propped open by a pair of gardening shoes. Stepping into the hall, you breathe in the mixture of baking bread and boiled coffee. A woman comes to you, a woman like your grandmother, but older. Her thin silver hair reaches her knees. Her face is so wrinkled, you can hardly see where her glittering eyes end and her crow’s feet begin.
Cocking her head, she says, “What took you so long?” And taking your hand, she marches you into her kitchen where a cat sleeps on the windowsill. She sits you down and serves you elderflower wine in an old jam jar. You take one sip and the kitchen reels around you.
You hear a rushing sound, a pounding, and then you are alone on a beach holding a piece of driftwood shaped like a goose in flight. A strange new weight pulls at your shoulder blades. Craning your neck to investigate, you see the wings sprouting there, blue-black crow wings. Of their own volition, they stretch and flap until you are airborne. Heading out over the waves, the tips of your bare toes graze the water.
“You dream too much,” your ex informs you. “You live on another planet. When’s the last time you watched the news? When’s the last time you voted? You can’t just spend your whole life with your head in the sand.”
Your ex is an activist. He majored in queer theory. He worked on Bernie Sander’s election campaign. He buys everything organic and volunteers one day a month at the soup kitchen. You are humbled by his social engagement, but when he sends you links to articles and videos overflowing with the world’s misery, the weight is too heavy for you to bear. You find yourself wondering how many homeless people he could have fed for the price of that solid brass Buddha.
Your grandmother lived until she was ninety-nine. She quarreled bitterly with everyone who came to visit and expressed concern about the farm falling into disrepair around her. She told them she just wanted to be left in peace. Then one day she died of a stroke while chopping wood on that old farm where she had lived alone for fifty-six years. She died instantly—no lingering pain, hospital gowns, or stench of bedpans or disinfectant. That’s how it is on your mother’s side of the family—the women are widowed early and seem to live forever until the day they suddenly drop dead.
After her death, her children sold her farm to a developer, who tore down her Victorian house to build rows and rows of condos. They left only three of her apple trees standing. Those trees are as old and gnarled as she was when she died. Like old women, they no longer bear fruit but stand and bear witness to what once was, but is no longer.
You pack the brass Buddha away in old newspapers, stick it in a cardboard box. You’ve decided to donate it to a drug rehabilitation center. Maybe it will bring the people there peace and clarity. Then you brew a pot of tea and sit in the rocking chair, huddled in an afghan your grandmother crocheted before you were born. You close your eyes and you are far out over the ocean, sometimes floating, sometimes flying. A blast of salt wind fills your shiny black wings, lifting you even higher. Opening your beak wide, you cackle and caw.
Mary Sharratt is committed to telling women’s stories. If you enjoyed this short piece, please check out her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, and her new novelRevelations, about the mystical pilgrim Margery Kempe and her friendship with Julian of Norwich. Visit her website.
We are hard-wired to frame our experience in stories. Almost anything we endure, no matter how painful, can take on a deeper meaning if we see it as one chapter in an overarching narrative. Stories give coherence and meaning to our often fragmented and chaotic lives.
Georgia O’Keeffe lived way beyond Act One!
We live in a youth-obsessed culture. The cosmetic industry pushes wrinkle creams and hair dye on us while celebrities resort to fillers and surgery to preserve an illusion of eternal girlhood. Advancing age, once a mark of honour, has become a source of shame. Popular fiction, literary classics, television, and movies celebrate young heroines, from Elizabeth Bennett to Katniss Everdeen. But where are the stories about older women and why do we all need to hear them?
We live longer than ever before. Women’s lives don’t play out in one act, even though our culture programs us to think that way. It almost seems a travesty to imagine an older Elizabeth Bennett grown bored of Darcy and yearning to reinvent herself and embrace some new adventure.
Old-school male authors were really big on killing off their young heroines so they couldn’t even dream about maturing into women with agency. Shakespeare merrily committed femicide on Juliet, Ophelia, and Desdemona, to name just a few of his hapless heroines.
Ophelia drowning. Don’t try this at home.
Why have so many authors, past and present, refused to let their heroines age? Why this reluctance to write about seasoned female protagonists who have been around the block more than once? Perhaps because too many people, even today, consider experienced women threatening. Since the time of witch burnings and scold’s bridles, male-dominated culture has been petrified of older woman who seize their power. That’s why stories about young women with a certain cut-off date are much cosier and less threatening.
But coming-of-age stories can only take us so far. We need to imagine lives beyond Act One, beyond a vague glimmering on the horizon. We need signposts to help us navigate our long and unavoidably complicated modern lives. We live in an age of divorce, blended families, and many of us pursue several careers and many paths of discovery over the course of a single lifetime. Contrary to cultural expectations, women do have exciting, juicy lives after forty and beyond. Contemporary fiction should explore and celebrate this.
Yes, there have been break-out books about older women—Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, and even literary classics, such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway—but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. In the publishing marketplace, stories about older women remain a hard sell. Which is bitterly ironic, considering that most fiction is purchased by women over the age of forty.
Yet it’s not just an older audience that needs to read about older heroines. I would argue that girls and young women are in even greater need of literary role models to guide them way beyond a self-limiting Act One.
As a teenager, I was hungry for such stories. Some proof that I had something to look forward to beyond the awfulness of high school (not the best years of my life). Like Holden Caulfield, I was caught in a web of angsty adolescent nihilism which cast everyone from the cheerleaders to the teachers as a chorus of fakes and phonies. I needed a gutsy female role model to pull me out of this miasma.
Eventually I found my heroine, not in the pages of a novel, but in Blackberry Winter, Margaret Mead’s memoir. I was electrified by this strong woman who didn’t give a fuck about preening for the male gaze and yet still had an amazing love life. Born in 1901, in an era when women were programmed for domesticity, she became a pioneering anthropologist and feminist icon. Her memoir, subtitled “My Earlier Years,” is not cut off at Act One, but only ends when she becomes a grandmother. Well into old age, Mead remained a mesmerizing and magnetic presence for being authentically herself.
Mead’s memoir is a rare jewel of female self-confidence in an ocean of women’s self-censorship and self-effacement. In Writing a Woman’s Life, Carolyn G. Heilbrun observes how both biographers and autobiographers have suppressed the truth about lived female experience to force it to conform to society’s script of how a woman’s life should be.
Heilbrun then discusses the Mother of All Female Memoirs, the first to appear in the English language. The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436–38) reveals the escapades of a woman mystic who wasn’t enclosed in a cell, but was literally all over the map. Kempe’s call to adventure unfolded amid the bitter disillusionment of midlife. She was forty, a desperate housewife, a failed business woman, a mother of fourteen children, and trapped in an abusive marriage. Marital rape was her lived reality—a fifteenth child might have killed her.
Her story completely exploded my every stereotype of medieval womanhood. Her life choices seem absolutely radical by the standards of our time as well as hers.
Since divorce was not an option, she seized back control by setting off on the perilous pilgrim’s path to Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela. She literally walked away from her unhappy marriage and blazed her trail across Europe and the Near East in an age when very few women traveled, even in the company of their husbands.
Alas, Kempe’s independence and eccentricities drew suspicion. When she returned to England, she found herself on trial for heresy. A guilty verdict would have seen her burned at the stake, yet she kept her spirits high by regaling the Archbishop of York with a parable of a defecating bear and a priest.
Most significantly, the spiritual mentor who stood by Kempe as she made her unorthodox choices was a woman in her seventies, the anchoress Julian of Norwich. Before leaving on her monumental pilgrimage, Kempe sought Julian’s counsel. This was an exceedingly vulnerable time in Kempe’s life. In leaving her husband and children, she had broken all the rules and was filled with self-doubt and uncertainty. Julian’s advice to trust her inner calling and not worry too much about what other people thought seemed to have a profoundly empowering impact on her. While Julian had chosen to wall herself into a cell and live as a religious recluse, she gave Kempe her blessing to wander the wide world.
Kempe’s story would have been lost to history if she hadn’t recorded it in her autobiography, a tremendous act of foresight and courage that made her a literary pioneer. She dictated her story to a priest, who copied it down for her and whose ecclesiastical authority gave gravitas to her narrative.
We are hard-wired to frame our experience in stories. Almost anything we endure, no matter how painful, can take on a deeper meaning if we see it as one chapter in an overarching narrative. Stories give coherence and meaning to our often fragmented and chaotic lives.
Margery Kempe’s story proves that even in the Middle Ages, women had the power to re-invent themselves in midlife and beyond. If Act One disappoints, time to dive feet first into Act Two. We can continually re-vision our own narrative.
Our culture likes to pit women against each other. Divide and conquer. Popular tropes cast young women and older women as rivals or even enemies. In fairy tales a young maiden’s coming of age involves going out into the wild forest to encounter the scary old witch who acts as a foil to the maiden’s youth and innocence.
But if we look past the patriarchal smokescreen, we see that youth and aging are mirrors reflecting one another. The maiden and the witch are not enemies. The true coming of age unfolds when the maiden seeks out the witch who ultimately empowers her. Who teaches her to be fierce and not suffer fools.
As we mature, we are gifted with the superpower of seeing through the false scripts that consumer society hands us. We can see just how absurd it is to kill ourselves to emulate airbrushed fashion models. We understand that the greatest lover in the world can’t fulfill us until we are at peace with ourselves. And so we can let ourselves go, whatever our age. Paint the pictures we’ve always longed to paint. Learn French and travel the world. Dance under the stars and see visions. Offer our own song to the vast symphony of life.
We need stories that honor the entire sweep of womanhood, not just Act One. What would our literary canon and popular culture look like if it truly reflected the depths and breadth of our authentic, lived experience as women and girls today?
This essay was originally published in Literary Hub.
Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. Her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, is published by Mariner.Her new novelRevelations, about the mystical pilgrim Margery Kempe and her friendship with Julian of Norwich, is now available and will be released in paperback in April. Visit her website.
, elders are people who have illuminated my path, inspired me to see my own potential. To open my eyes, all my senses, even those I did not know I had. Elders show bravery and model for us how to be strong.
As I rediscover my connection with the earth, my eco-consciousness inspires me to transform. As I go back to nature, I re-awaken my ancient cellular memories of living in harmony with the earth. I feel called to dance barefoot, play drums, make offerings, bathe in moonlight, harvest with my own hands. As I move forward on a path which is both new and old, it is my beloved elders who have shown me how to find my way.
What is an Elder?
The word elder comes from an Old English word which also meant ancestor or chief. A lot can change in a thousand years and many of us no longer honor older people or seek out them out for advice.
In my experience, elders are people who have illuminated my path, inspired me to see my own potential. To open my eyes, all my senses, even those I did not know I had. Elders show bravery and model for us how to be strong.
My first wise woman teachings came from my family. My mother, and her mother, taught me to be myself, to love being outdoors and the importance of having a garden. Feeling the joy of flowers, cooking with fresh herbs, planting a tree to honor the dead. These are a few ancient traditions of my ancestors that have survived even in a modernized and urban setting.
The word elder comes from an Old English word which also meant ancestor or chief. A lot can change in a thousand years and many of us no longer honor older people or seek out them out for advice.
In my experience, elders are people who have illuminated my path, inspired me to see my own potential. To open my eyes, all my senses, even those I did not know I had. Elders show bravery and model for us how to be strong.
My first wise woman teachings came from my family. My mother, and her mother, taught me to be myself, to love being outdoors and the importance of having a garden. Feeling the joy of flowers, cooking with fresh herbs, planting a tree to honor the dead. These are a few ancient traditions of my ancestors that have survived even in a modernized and urban setting.
To be transparent, these last four weeks have unintentionally flown by and have been filled with great pain, sorrow, depression, loss, and grief to be honest. I can feel my own spirit at the beginning of a long healing process and have a feeling that these words kept between you and I will be a tremendous part of my healing. Healing in itself is an essential aspect of Womanism and how I found my way to it. I have been privileged to develop spiritual practices that encourage and assist with healing in emotional, physical, mental, and wisdom ways!
Today, I acknowledge the Africana Womanism (Clenora Hudson-Weems) characteristic of strength. I must admit I have a strained relationship with the word as a Black woman. I was raised by strong women to be strong in an environment in which we will always have to strong. As a result, being soft is interpreted as weak. I mourn that Black women rarely find spaces in which they can turn off their survival mode- fight or flight nervous system responses and relax while being soft. It is so foreign. At this point in my life softness is so inconvenient and also something that I don’t even know how to maintain consistently.
(Note: This post briefly references genocide and brothels.)
Every year we can, we go visit my amazing Korean parents in law, Halmeoni and Harabeoji (‘Grandmother’ and ‘Grandfather’). Now in their 80s, they consistently embody the kind of radical trust that I’m trying to build. Their lives tell like a movie script, one dramatic, heartbreaking story after another, interwoven with incredible courage, faithfulness, and generosity. Hunger and genocide, robbery and abandonment, occupation and persecution – and, unexpected, powerful sources of support and inspiration.
Against all odds, their journeys brought them together; then across the world to Germany, a haven to raise their children and minister to lonely Korean workers, far from kin and homeland. Then, uprooted again to chilly Alberta, to learn yet another language and culture, ecosystem and way.
Four hands are spiraling around a circle breaking time into increments. Resonate bells call up dark nights, independently ushering in a season without need to harmonize. Percussive voices soothe an aching heart overflowing with grief. Chimes intoning the inside out.
Recently I gave myself an expensive gift. I had my two beloved clocks cleaned and oiled, and now both are ticking and chiming again.
I was sometimes told I look like my grandmother on my dad’s side, and although it wasn’t meant as a compliment, I always welcomed it as such. I wanted to be like my grandma. She was a tough, no-nonsense woman who was light-hearted and spunky to the very end of her life. She had a serious expression on her face most of the time but would playfully and unexpectedly stick out her tongue at neighbor-friends when they passed by her house. She had well-developed patterns of good-natured banter with most people in her neighborhood. She was well-known and well-liked, and people also knew not to mess with her. So, if I could be thought to be anything like her, I was good with that.
She lived in Mexico and my family in the United States. In Mexico, even as a younger kid, we were allowed to move around town on the bus if my older cousin was with us. We always landed and stayed with my mom’s side of the family and usually only went to visit my dad’s side for an afternoon or two during the course of our time in Guadalajara, where my parents were from. I couldn’t wait to surprise visit my dad’s side of the family – my grandma, aunt, and grandpa who all lived together. We never announced our visit in advance; so it was fun for me to get to walk into the patio of their apartment complex and find my grandma, as usual, standing in the doorway of her front door, smoking. She was a businesswoman, always running a small business, selling basic grocery items from home, so her door was always open. And she was almost always right there, standing just outside her door, a serious expression on her face, and a smoke in hand.
On our table, the crimson pomegranate seeds my mother had carefully separated from the skin glistened like jewels illumined from within; a pale green jam made from the grated flesh of a gourd, scented with rosewater and studded with thin slivers of blanched almonds, shone with a numinous, interior light. Bowls of black-eyed peas simmered with cinnamon and tomatoes were arrayed beside a delicately-flavored leek omelet, breaded and fried brains, roasted beets, fresh dates, apples, and—best of all—a previously untasted new fruit of the season: usually fresh fig or persimmon or prickly pear.
When I was growing up in my Egyptian Jewish immigrant home, each of the High Holidays was imbued with sacredness, thanks largely to my mother’s efforts to create a meaningful gathering of family and friends. Around a long table, covered with an embroidered white cloth and set with sparkling silver and delicately fluted china, she served at each season the festive meal that made manifest for us the presence of the Divine.
My father, an Orthodox Jewish man, followed the tenets of his faith, praying each morning and attending synagogue each week. But it was my mother who brought to life the seasonal festivals that also characterize Judaism. As a child, I longed to pray with my father and I envied my brother and male cousins who studied and recited the ancient Hebrew; I resented having to polish silver and set the table. But today I’m grateful for my mother’s quiet teachings.
Passover had special meaning for us because our family’s departure from Egypt seemed a reenactment of the ancient Exodus. But Rosh Hashanah, that holy day without explanatory narrative, seemed even purer in its celebration of abundance and blessing, renewal and return. Each year, I looked forward to the new moon in Tishrei that coincided with the arrival of autumn in New York and the beginning of the school year.
While planting and constructing my indoor container garden, I thought about how my ancestors put seeds into their children’s hair so that in case they were taken away to live and die in chains, they would at least be able to sustain themselves with a piece of the motherland. Rice, okra, yams, watermelon, and so MANY more crops that would go on to make white slaveholding Americans so rich (passing their wealth to their descendants and zero reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans), that they were willing to fight a war to sustain their evil practices of owning human beings as chattel (Check out High on the Hog Netflix documentary which was adapted from a book by Dr. Jessica B. Harris). Enslaved Africans brought these foods to the new world, a direct result of slavery.
As I wash my daughter’s hair (which for Black women and girls is a PROCESS!!), as I moisturize her hair, and as I braid my hair, I am thankful that no one has a right to my child and that I do not need to fear her enslavement. Instead, I manifest her revolutionary future to carry the torch of our ancestors. A Torch and a commitment to elevate our community and move the community forward. I leave it up to her to choose how she will carry that torch forward!
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 engage in solo quiet contemplation, outside in the wild when I can. I think more about ways of being rather than ways of doing and more about the small messages I want to leave to generations to come instead of major accomplishments. I feel as if I am contracting in towards the center of the spiral of my spiritual journey.
Many questions are asked of us as a community, but the answers which are so complex that we should be commended for even attempting to answer, are heard- if they are not interrupted- but rarely understood. As a Black mother and wife, I have accepted the fact that no one will understand my struggle outside of other Black mothers and wives. After being asked questions about how my community relates to slavery, I am convinced that no one outside of my Black American community will ever understand how slavery has impacted our lives, identities, family structures, trauma, and deaths. Furthermore, it has yet to be understood how the past of slavery continues to impact these areas as a people.
Firstly, although slavery has left an immense imprint on our racial memory, the Black community is not stuck in slavery simply because we bring it up. It is brought up because it is a part of our story and we should not be made to feel ashamed of it. Just because you are tired of hearing about it or uncomfortable does not mean that Black Americans should be made to feel as though should avoid speaking of our history. Some many pro-Black groups and movements emphasize and celebrate the achievements of Black Americans before, during, after, and despite slavery. However, these movements threaten the dominant culture, and much of their achievements are ignored or perceived as threats and terrorism. It is hard to educate ourselves and our children about our ancestor pre-enslavement because our legacy, history, sacred knowledge, and culture were destroyed and our memories were erased and replaced with the bible and colonialist interpretations of scripture. Many of these scriptures are interpreted to justify slavery and are still used to justify police brutality, mass incarceration, and psychological warfare on Black Americans. Nevertheless, we do what we can to celebrate ourselves and our heritage. In doing so, we cannot ever forget slavery.
I was recently asked how I reconcile being a Christian with also being a critic of Christian theology, traditions, and culture. I am asked this often and my answer is always the same. I have not found reconciliation and might always be finding a way to reconcile this – an endless cycle of trying to make my heart fit into a structure in which centers whiteness and domination.
This time is different though. When I was asked my mind immediately returned to the Earth. Nature. Creation. How I have always longed for a plot of sacred Earth of my own in which I would continually give birth to and create life in various ways. How so far this dream has seemed from my brown fingertips. Never in my almost twenty-nine years, have I imagined I would have the opportunity to own my own land. However, in the last few years since I worked and lived on a farm and have been manifesting with lunar energy and ritual that one day I would harvest and care for a land of my own. A land that I would pass down to my children. A land in which we would find God. A land which would sustain us.
It is often said that every year when you read the same Torah passages, you are in a different place, spiritually and otherwise. Therefore, one will always be learning new meanings and discovering new insights from them. No more is that true than in this week’s Torah parshah Tazria-Metzora.
Tazria-Metzora (Leviticus 12:1- 15:33) is a double parshah containing a list of rules concerning ritual purity and impurity, mostly having to do with leprosy. The parshah begins with the requirement for women a certain number of days after childbirth to immerse in a mikvah as well as offer animals for sacrifice at the temple. Then, it commands the circumcision of a boy child at 8 days of age. The next three chapters discuss an extensive list of what has to be all possible encounters with leprosy, including the infection of a home itself. The parshah prescribes various interactions between lepers, homes with leprosy, and the kohenim. Mostly, the kohenim decide if the skin lesions people or houses have are leprosy, another skin disease or harmless. If diseased or if the lesions are inconclusive, the people and houses enter quarantine. The kohenim also consult on whether a leper or house is healed and how to go about atonement. For atonement, former lepers immerse in the mikvah and pay for the kohenim to offer specific sacrifices at the temple. Homes also undergo a type of ritual purification by the kohenim when they have been healed of leprosy. This double parshah ends with immersion requirements for emissions of semen and menstrual blood.
Historically, there are two considerations, which I have discussed in other posts, to address first. To begin with, there is the ancient world’s understanding of disease as punishment for sin. This sin can either be the sin of the diseased person or punishment from generations past. For more about how this cycle of sin, punishment, repentance and atonement work as well as my thoughts on it, see here.
I have newly found myself a wife and in the throes of motherhood. In many feminist circles, I have encountered anti-family and anti-wifehood sentiments. The understanding is that to be a wife, and, to be a wife that chooses to start a family, is an oppressive position to occupy as well as the antithesis of the feminist movement. Though I am not typically a fan of tough physical, emotional, soulful labor, these two positions have been the highlights of my life so far.
My daughter embodies both my husband and me, physically. However, she is and will become her own person-soul. She is so young, but her soul is eternal, and has experienced eternity. I am here to help her navigate remembering who she is. She inhabits the intersection of Blackness, divinity, femininity, and infinity. Motherhood has greatly increased my capacity of appreciation for women and what women are capable of doing. Especially from the intersection of Blackness and woman-ness. From the capacity to create, labor, and deliver life to the task of raising Black children in a country that would have them annihilated, emotionally traumatized, and made to accept they are inferior.
I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have vowed to change one of my habits. I have always been house-proud and love using my artistic flair to decorate my home in beauty. I have had a cleaning lady most of the time for many years, so my homes have been relatively clean. The living room and dining room have always been ready to receive guests. But I didn’t always do the dishes or clean the surfaces in the kitchen right away, clothes I had worn often sat on chairs before I hung them up, and I didn’t make the bed every day.
Now that I think about it, this habit goes back to my childhood and teen-age years, when my not picking up things in my bedroom was a bone of contention between me and my mother. Joyce Zonana wrote recently about how she rejected her mother’s role as homemaker and “dutiful” wife when she was young. Only now during the Covid crisis, she writes, is she beginning to enjoy the traditional women’s work of cooking regularly and knitting.
When I was a teen-ager, I sewed all of my clothes (both because we didn’t have a lot of money and because, as I was very tall and very skinny, most ready-made clothes didn’t fit). I was a second mother to my baby brother. For me, those were the fun parts of women’s work. But I hated washing dishes and cleaning the house, and I did not learn how to cook. I suppose I recoiled from the repetitiveness of those tasks. I was also aware that my father ruled the roost, and though I would never have criticized him, I knew that one of my mother’s jobs was to please him. Laura Montoya’s meditation on her grandmother’s life in a recent blog reminds us that the failure of homemakers to meet their husbands needs or wants can lead to violence.
When I went away to college, I learned to disparage all of women’s work, including the parts of it I had loved. I was taught that the “life of the mind” was the highest pursuit and that the “life of the body” was secondary. I now see this aspect of university culture as brainwashing of the highest order. Continue reading “Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ”
When my parents left Egypt, they left behind everything they’d grown up with, all the objects that carried their deepest associations and memories. They taught me to scorn such “things”—what others value as mementos or souvenirs—rightly reasoning they can be lost in a moment. But while we have them, it is lovely, I’m learning, to let the spirits embedded within them, the memories and feelings they evoke, surround and comfort us. As I move through this house, I feel bound to my own and others’ histories, embedded in a rich and complex life that nurtures and sustains me. And as I sit still and knit, I sense that I am knitting (knotting) up the by now long, loose threads of my own life, shaping them into a coherent and satisfying whole.
When I was growing up, home was the last place I wanted to be. It’s not that ours was an abusive or angry household: both parents loved me and my mother labored to create a calm, clean space to contain us all. It’s just that I felt suffocated.
Part of the problem was that we were immigrants. My parents were struggling to find their way in an alien culture, and, with little else to hold onto, they clung to their customs and traditions. I wanted to be “American,” to mingle with classmates, to venture into the vastness (New York City!) just beyond our door. The Middle Eastern culture from which we hailed had strict rules for women and girls, and my mother expected me to follow them. She herself was an excellent cook, a creative seamstress and scrupulous housekeeper, a devoted and dutiful wife. I rejected all of it, refusing to cook, ripping out seams, balking at my weekly chores of dusting and vacuuming and ironing. Instead I dreamt of life as a writer, a renegade, an outlaw. My role models were hobos and witches and gypsies; more than anything, I yearned to be free, longing to “walk at all risks,” like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh.
Last Friday my oncologist gave me the best birthday present I could have imagined. (My birthday was 7:30 pm last night December 20, California time.) Without going into details, my latest CT scan was so much more positive than the last one that it feels like a miracle. I have reason to hope.
Today I am full of gratitude. I am grateful to my doctor Dimitrios Mavroudis who is the head of Oncology at the University of Crete and at the Pagni Hospital in Heraklion. I am grateful to medical science for the chemotherapy that is healing my body.
I am grateful for the national health system of Greece that is covering the cost of my treatment because I am a Greek citizen even though I never contributed to the national health insurance.
I am grateful to the nurses at the Pagni hospital who are unfailingly kind as they take my blood and regulate my chemotherapy.
I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have vowed to change one of my habits. I have always been house-proud and love using my artistic flair to decorate my home in beauty. I have had a cleaning lady most of the time for many years, so my homes have been relatively clean. The living room and dining room have always been ready to receive guests. But I didn’t always do the dishes or clean the surfaces in the kitchen right away, clothes I had worn often sat on chairs before I hung them up, and I didn’t make the bed every day.
When I was growing up, home was the last place I wanted to be. It’s not that ours was an abusive or angry household: both parents loved me and my mother labored to create a calm, clean space to contain us all. It’s just that I felt suffocated.
Last Friday my oncologist gave me the best birthday present I could have imagined. (My birthday was 7:30 pm last night December 20, California time.) Without going into details, my latest CT scan was so much more positive than the last one that it feels like a miracle. I have reason to hope.
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