What If Jesus Is Dead (And It’s A Good Thing)? by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Bear with me.

I know that most Christians accept some version of the idea that Jesus, the person, died, and then ‘rose from the dead’ in a supernatural, miraculous way – probably the most common definition of what Christians celebrate at Easter. I grew up in progressive Christian churches, where I, too, was taught this idea, which I found fascinating and inspiring. Many people (both Christians and others) still find it healing and inspirational; and I want to state clearly that I think that’s well and good.

Okay.

What I would like to suggest, however, is that this approach may miss the main point of Easter, of resurrection, and of these narratives. Here goes.

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Re-Imaging Three Marys by Janet Sunderland

The recent #metoo movement, along with young women entering Congress, has pointed to an important question. Why, in this 21st Century, are these achievements remarkable? Why has it taken so long for women to be recognized as capable for these positions? One possible reason is the Christian mythology around women. However, to recreate the way women are viewed, we must re-imagine the women who have been standard-bearers for two thousand years.

 

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The Tree as Mother by Mama Donna Henes

Arbor Day, Earth Day, May Day and Mother’s Day are deeply connected conceptually, etymologically, culturally and emotionally.
The tree, with its roots buried deep in the earth and its branches reaching upward toward heaven, spread wide to embrace all of eternity, is a prime symbol of life in many cultures. Trees have long been worshipped as beneficent spirits of bounty. Trees, after all, shade and feed us. Supply and sustain us. Serve us in endless ways. Trees breathe life into our lungs, the source of endless inspiration.
Possessing the potent powers of fertility, growth, resilience and longevity, the tree is widely seen as the progenitor of the world Family Tree. The Tree of Life. The tree goddess was seen as a sylph, an airy tree spirit who resides among the green leaves, sustaining and nurturing the vegetative forces. She is the symbol of the flow of life, a Mother Goddess who is Herself the Tree of Life.

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Where the Dance Is . . . On Cultivating a Daily Practice by Joyce Zonana

Although Goddess traditions invite us to embrace a world of immanence and change, rather than to seek to escape into transcendence—which some yoga teachings seem to point toward—I have come to believe that the “still point,” is, as Eliot writes, where “the dance is.” In other words, daily practice might grant us the capacity to always move through the world with grace and joy. The mind will be steady as it encounters and embraces the turning world. We will be whole.

jz-headshotWhen I was growing up, I was fascinated to see my father each day recite the morning blessings mandated for Jewish men. While the rest of the household bustled sleepily—my mother in the kitchen, my brother and I taking turns in the bathroom, my grandmother slowly getting dressed—my father, still in his pajamas, would stand in the center of our small living room, yarmulke on his head, tefillin wrapped around his arm and forehead, tallit draped over his shoulders. Using a tattered old siddur he had brought with him from Cairo, he would face the east and begin the ancient Hebrew prayers: “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe . . .”

I never knew then the content of what my father intoned, but I knew how committed he was to his practice: he prayed every morning without fail, from the day of his bar mitvah at the age of eleven (the rabbi in Cairo had decided to initiate him early because he had lost his father as a young child) until he a few years before his death at 84, when he became debilitated by Parkinson’s Disease. Ours was not a traditionally Orthodox Jewish family—we did not observe the Sabbath or keep kosher—but my father’s faithful performance grounded him and all the rest of us, bringing us us to what T.S. Eliot called “the still point of the turning world.”

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The Room Where We Support Each Other, Part 2 by Carol P. Christ

Last week, In the Room of Undressing where women strip themselves to the bone, my great-great-grandmothers on my father’s side spoke in me. I had been afraid they would judge me for not being a wife and mother like they were, but they did not.

The story continues with my great-great-grandmothers on my mother’s side.

Ingrid Mattsdottor, born 1829, Överhogdal, Jämtlands Län, Sweden, died 1918, Kansas City, Missouri, proprietor of a boarding house, mother of five daughters:

I was the oldest of eight children. Our father died when I was eleven. At sixteen I was sent to work as a servant in a village far from home. I stayed for six years. After that, I worked for two years on a farm in our village. I was twenty-nine, and wondering if I would be an old maid, when Olof and I married. Our five daughters came quickly. I knew a lot more about work and children he did, so I took charge. When the crops failed all over Sweden for two years running, I said enough was enough. As soon as our last daughter was born, I sold the farm, and we left for America.

Iowa was worse than Sweden. Our little Carin died the first year. Olof gave Ingrid to a wealthy Swedish couple without so much as a word to me. He kept talking about going back to Sweden. One day he took the money I set aside and bought his ticket.

By the time he came back for us, Anna, Sarah, Belle, and I had moved to Kansas City. I was running a boarding house. I told Olof that we had no intention of going back to Sweden with him. When Anna married, instead of moving out, she brought her husband and his children to live with us. Belle became quite the business woman and took over my role as provider. Sarah and her family were always close by.

I worked as hard as any man and Belle did too. “Far better off on our own,” we would often say. We are proud to have another strong woman in our family. I am sorry you didn’t get to meet Belle. You would have liked her.

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The Room Where We Support Each Other, Part 1 by Carol P. Christ

Over the past year or so I have been reciting my mother line, seven generations back, as a mantra of gratitude that helps me sleep at night. Sometimes I also name my sixteen great-great-grandparents, though I often fall asleep before finishing.

I have gained courage from the strength of their lives, but I never wondered what my eight great-great grandmothers would think of me. My life feels so different from theirs. Perhaps I feared they would judge me and my life.

This weekend, while re-reading Woman and Nature, I followed the narrator through a Passage to the Room of Dressing:

Where the women are not close. Where the women keep themselves at a distance.  . . . where the women tell each other that they are happy.  . . . The room where the daughter denies she is anything like her mother. (156)

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Why Pro-Life Stops at Birth: Who Really Supports Life and Why by Winifred Nathan

The patriarchal Catholic Church claims to be pro-Life.  But is it pro-Life?  Or is it pro-Birth?  A Catholic Benedictine sister outed the pro-Life movement. Her position: the pro-life crowd shows little if any ongoing interest in life after birth.  They’re pro-birth, but not pro-life.  Legislators who enact laws to restrict a woman’s right to an abortion, but then stand firm against funding  programs that assist the mother and her baby once the child is born are not pro-life.   Too often the goal of anti-abortion advocates is for the fetus to make it to birth. Birth is the important value, life not so much.

I propose the starting point for deciphering this puzzle is to look at our desire as human beings for immortality.  We want to defy death believing that there is a spiritual continuation of who we are after our bodies shut down.  We want death to be a new beginning.

A great deal of effort goes into seeking  an answer to the question what comes next.  A question we presently lack the capacity to answer. We honestly do not know what if anything happens following death.

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Windigo by Sara Wright

Windigo,

the Potawami Nations call him.

Malignant,

this spirit thrives

in the Northern Woods,

within the human soul.

Hatred for self or other

hidden

under Lies.

 

Windigo, the

Potawami Nations call him

He thrives

on greed.

Empty

He can never

Be filled.

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Celtic Awen, Spiritual Homecoming, and Singing with Trees by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Does your name have a special meaning? Mine does. In fact, in one corner of the world, you would be very hard pressed to find anyone who did not know the significance of the name Trelawney and its history. They could probably even sing you a rousing song about it:

And shall Trelawny live? Or shall Trelawny die?

There’s twenty thousand Cornish here, will know the reason why![1]

But growing up in New England, no one had ever heard the name Trelawney before, or the name “Cornwall,” the land of Trelawney. If I said “Celtic,” they would finally nod.

Then with the internet came affordable communication “across the pond” to Britain, and my earliest internet explorations connected me with Cornwall, where my grandfather came from. I taught myself Cornish folk songs, I found folktales, recipes, and a more richly detailed cultural nourishment than my Cornish grandfather had managed to pass along to us. A lifelong mystic and Methodist minister, but if you ever asked my grandfather his religion, he would reply, “Druid,” with just that hint of mysterious twinkle in his eye.

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Dear Mary by Sara Wright

This piece was written in response to Gina Messina’s recent Feminism and Religion piece “Who is God?”

Dear Mary,

When I responded to a post on feminism and religion this morning I wrote that you were my first goddess. As a child I knew little beyond that you were the “Mother of God,” and I found your presence immensely comforting, even seeking you out in secret, entering your rose garden in a local monastery. I needed you so.

Early in adolescence I learned that your life was one of purity, sacrifice, and loss. Your purity left me bereft. How could a young Victorian girl be “good enough” to serve such a figure? I was fierce and passionate – a thorny red rose – with an empty hole in my heart.

Sadly, I released you and chose your sister the whore, the Black Goddess in disguise… but I didn’t know that then; I only knew that the “black” woman succumbed to her flesh as I did, covered herself in shame…What lies Patriarchy tells…

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