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… Read More ›
Ancestors
On Tazria-Metzora and Covid: Saving Lives, Saving Worlds, and Saving the World by Ivy Helman
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… Read More ›
Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga
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… Read More ›
Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ
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… Read More ›
Homebound by Joyce Zonana
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.
Gratitude and Hope: With a Lot of Help from My Friends by Carol P. Christ
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… Read More ›
Women’s Spiritual Power Is All Around Us by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In this most challenging time, women are showing the world what women’s spiritual power can do. They are guiding nations, states, and communities through the pandemic and towards environmental sanity; feeding the hungry bodies and spirits of their neighbors… Read More ›
Feminist Parenting Part 3—Les Misérable Mothers, why is this so %$@# haaaaard?! by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
Life has been challenging lately – I’m sure you can relate. Normal emotional and financial stress are worsened by COVID-19 and the election— and I’ve often said that there’s nothing like motherhood for making us feel like failures… It’s as… Read More ›
Glimpsing La Vièio ié Danso – “The Untouchable Wild Goddess” – in Jóusè d’Arbaud’s Beast of Vacarés by Joyce Zonana
Nearly a century later, d’Arbaud’s words still have the power to startle and delight, vividly evoking Earth’s sacredness.
Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier
We have nine justices usually but one of our most beloved, and notorious, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, RBG, has gone to the Summerland, across the Rainbow Bridge, to the afterlife—wherever that is for her, she’s gone there. May her memory be… Read More ›
Yes There are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 3
This blog post is the 3rd in a series of looking for female deities in the bible who have been translated out of easy reach or otherwise hidden within its words. In my last blog post I discussed bird imagery… Read More ›
ANNA’S DANCE: A BALKAN ODYSSEY by Michele Levy – Book Review by Joyce Zonana
Toward the end of her complex odyssey, Anna finds herself alone in an ancient Istanbul synagogue, where at long last she unreservedly “name[s] herself” a Jew and experiences connection with a God that “fuse[s] both male and female” and “from that wholeness birth[s] mercy and love.” Vowing to work to “help repair [the] world”–tikkun olam–she moves forward to face her life with a “sense of wholeness” that had eluded her for so long.
Hagar and Intersectionality by Marilyn Batchelor
I began to follow Kimberlé Crenshaw a little more than five years ago when I first learned of her theory of intersectionality as a more concise description of oppressions stemming from race, age, gender, sex/sexual orientation, religion and socio-economic status. … Read More ›
Elder – Berry Musings by Sara Wright
I first became interested in herbalism as a young mother who kept a small herbal garden outside her back door. There is nothing better than fresh herbs to spice up any dish (as any good cook knows well) and baking… Read More ›
Ancient Mothers, I Hear You Calling Me to Crete by Carol P. Christ
On a cold and rainy morning in Lesbos, I ponder the advice of my intuitive friend Cristina to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of my decision to move to Crete. When asked why I am moving from Lesbos to Crete,… Read More ›
Tree Talk: Dr. Susan Simard by Sara Wright
Scientist Susan Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University in Vancouver, British Columbia, who has been studying the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate underground inter-tree communication and interaction. Over a period of more than… Read More ›
Welcome to the New Year by Natalie Weaver
Welcome to the New Year. One year ago, on New Year’s eve, I buried my father’s ashes. It was an incredible experience to orchestrate the funeral and burial of the man who begat me. He was nowhere near a Hallmark greeting card… Read More ›
Becoming Scrub by Sara Wright
In the precious hour before dawn I walk down to a river that no longer empties into the sea – the circle of life has been broken – the earth’s veins and arteries are hopelessly clogged by human interference (stupidity)… Read More ›
The Door by John Erickson
Faith is something we get from each other, and sometimes in the most magical of circumstances, faith becomes embodied by the person you love the most.
Embracing the Darkness by Judith Shaw
For most of my life I dreaded both the approach of winter and winter itself. Having grown up in the semi-tropics of New Orleans I had little tolerance for the cold. Living further north as an adult, the shortening days… Read More ›
The Feast of Santo Tomas by Sara Wright
This morning I went up to the village plaza in Abiquiu to watch the dancers parade around the church with their saint who is also honored at this village festival held every year at the end of November. This is… Read More ›
Mother – Daughter Betrayal by Sara Wright
(1) Today is my mother’s birthday and although she has been dead for more than a decade I still think of her almost every day. At the time of her death I had not seen her for twelve years. Not… Read More ›
What I Learn from Women in Southern Morocco by Laura Shannon
I feel deeply fortunate to be able to travel regularly to southern Morocco. In Taroudant in the Souss Valley, and further south in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, my groups of students have the chance to discover women’s cultural traditions including music… Read More ›
Mother of All Fears by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
This time of year, the general public tends to pay more attention than usual to witches. Much of it is lighthearted – halloween costumes and memes about where to park your broom. Some of it is spiritual – adherents of… Read More ›
Wealth In Imagination by Laurie Goodhart
Artwork and sustainable agriculture are the two threads of my professional life. They mingle fruitfully beneath the surface as I sift through remaining evidence of ancient worlds, trying to sense how people of lost cultures met basic survival needs and… Read More ›
Joan of Arc from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri
“I’m not afraid. I was born to do this.” -Joan of Arc Women are inherently valiant. In extreme situations we armor up and lead others through whatever we are battling at the time. Joan of Arc was a human woman… Read More ›
The Dying Time by Esther Nelson
At the end of Anita Diamant’s novel, THE RED TENT, Dinah—the same young woman who is only briefly mentioned in the biblical account (Genesis 34)—dies after a long and full life. The biblical text tells us that Dinah “went out… Read More ›
Autumn Equinox with the Ancestors, or after ecstasy indeed the laundry*) Eline Kieft
As I hang the laundry back home, I remember how just 24 hours earlier I arrived back on the beach after an incredible time at the ancestral burial mound where I spend the night in ceremony at the Autumn Equinox…. Read More ›
Finding Missing Pieces of My Ancestral Story: Scotland and Ireland by Carol P. Christ
When I began researching years ago, I knew the names of my grandparents and what country in Europe their ancestors were from, but not much more. I have now traced most of my ancestors back to the Old Country, some… Read More ›
“This Golgotha of Modern Times” by Joyce Zonana
Our visit to Poland coincides with the Feast of the Assumption, a time when tens of thousands of pilgrims arrive on foot to pay homage to Our Lady of Częstochowa, Poland’s Black Madonna. I too am a pilgrim, visiting the sites, not of miracles but of martyrdom. As I make my way through what Pope John Paul II called “this Golgotha of modern times,” I am overcome; like him, I “am here kneeling down” to implore Our Lady to help us heal the vast, still open wound that is our life on this earth.
