animals – Page 19 – Feminism and Religion

GODDESS AND SACRED COW: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SACRED BULL by Carol P. Christ

Most archaeologists and visitors to museums assume that when they see a horned bovine, they are faced with the image of the male God or the image of the bull sacrifice. In the minds of many, these two are one, as we have been taught that the male God who was the consort or son-lover of the Goddess was sacrificed. Yet horned Goddesses are not infrequent in the history of religions and Hindus still revere the sacred cow.

Cattle have played an important role in human life from the beginning of agriculture. Cows provide milk which is also turned into butter, cheese, and yogurt. Most of the young males and some of the females are killed for meat or leather, while a few males are kept to impregnate the females. Though the “raging bull” is the lens through which most of us think about mature male bovines, I have been told by a friend who raised cattle that in fact bulls are for the most part gentle and even sweet–though of course they are also potentially dangerous.

Before the industrial revolution, there was also a third category of bovines, the castrated males, known as oxen, who were used as “beasts of burden”–to pull plows, litters, and after the invention of the wheel, wheeled vehicles. Many people assume that only bulls have horns. This is not the case. Recently a friend who was raised on a dairy farm described to me the pain experienced by young female cows when their horns are burned out. So let us think again about the images of the horned bovines found in museums. Given that cows and oxen were long-term companions of early “man” and early “woman,” why should we assume that all horned bovines are bulls? Continue reading “GODDESS AND SACRED COW: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SACRED BULL by Carol P. Christ”

Be-pistemology by Marcia Mount Shoop

Epistemology—the study or theory of the nature and the ground of knowledge, particularly with respect to the limits and validity of knowledges and the sources of knowledge.

Being—the qualities and characteristics that constitute conscious existence; a living thing.

I look outside the open window of my temporary apartment and read and re-read the sign that beckons drivers to notice this unspectacular place. “Welcome Home” it says in black Times New Roman font on a plain white background. As if saying it so simply, makes it true.

It doesn’t feel much like home to me right now. And thankfully it doesn’t really need to. Soon I will move into a new house. Then I will take the next step in working to make a home in this new place where my family and I have moved. For my husband, kids, and me, the knowledge that the apartment is temporary helps us deal with the strangeness of it. We know it’s not for long. And knowing that helps us behave in certain ways and cultivate particular expectations. This mode of operations allows us to bide our time. We have done just enough settling in to feel ok here—unpacked a suitcase, stocked the refrigerator. But we won’t hang pictures; we won’t be too intentional about meeting the neighbors. Being cordial is enough. After all, this isn’t really home. My nine-year-old daughter has actually made a rule that no one is allowed to call this apartment “home.” Continue reading “Be-pistemology by Marcia Mount Shoop”

Stories from the Yoga Mat: Sleep as Spiritual Necessity by Marie Cartier

Sleep. Sleep. Sleeep.

Sleep is the best meditation – Dalai Lama

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep – E. Joseph Cossman

I.
Sleeping is like hitting the reset button. People die without sleep.

It can make us maniacal and cut off our connection to spirit to be without sleep.
Are you afraid of missing something—if you sleep…? Is it something you are afraid you didn’t do or didn’t get to do? And yet…what part of our spiritual practice is suffering as a result of not sleeping…?

There is a billboard that states, you can sleep when you’re dead. Yet, the truth is you might die a lot faster if you don’t sleep. Continue reading “Stories from the Yoga Mat: Sleep as Spiritual Necessity by Marie Cartier”

Extending Compassion and Vegetarianism by Xochitl Alvizo

“I did not know to recognize you as individuals when I bought you, but I know to recognize you as individuals now…”

I had been a vegetarian, and sometimes pescatarian, for more than 10 years before becoming vegan. Despite the length of my vegetarianism, in all that time I had not been inclined to go vegan. First, I really didn’t know too much about veganism and only began meeting a few vegans about five or six years ago here in Boston, none of whom had shared a compelling enough reason for their choice (at least not compelling to me). Further, I had no imagination for life without cheese or Cherry Garcia ice cream(!), and so I happily continued with my vegetarian ways. Then enters Carol Adams…

In a teleconference that WATER had with Carol Adams on March 14, 2012 (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual), the beauty of her veganism moved me to a new understanding of my food choices. I listened to the WATER audio recording some months after the actual event (these teleconference audio recordings are a great resource you should all access), and although I had been familiar with some of her work and had heard her speak before, I had not heard her talk about the compassion element of veganism. Her emphasis on increasing compassion, which I witnessed in action during her conversation with one of the listeners, was what moved me to my new practice. Continue reading “Extending Compassion and Vegetarianism by Xochitl Alvizo”

The Child of the Bog (continued) By Barbara Ardinger

The story so far. In the ancient land beside the river, the God-King lies in what appears to be death. No one can awaken him. In the house of a court Magician, the peasant girl Ubastet is dusting and conversing with a magical stork when two minor miracles occur. The Magician consults the Hierophant, but they cannot explain the miracles. Now the Queen has come into the room. She is determined to figure out what’s going on. (Where do they fly to? Romania, another land of great enchantment.)

Before the sun set that day, the Queen of the golden land called a convention of priests and wizards and magicians and astrologers and seers and prophets and physicians. When they had all assembled in the throne room, she set the matter before them. Day after day, the learned ones debated, night after night, they performed their high magics and gorgeous rituals. In their secret places, the animals gathered together as well and performed their own rituals. But the mirror, whose thousand pieces had been gathered up and cleansed and set back into the frame in a sublime mosaic, the mirror refused to speak again. The golden beetle remained cold and silent.

child of the bog, barbara ardinger — Isis

Continue reading “The Child of the Bog (continued) By Barbara Ardinger”

We Are All Earthings: Speciesism and Feminist Responsibility Toward Animals by Amy Levin

“earth’ling: n. One who inhabits the earth.” – Earthlings, 2006

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.” -Henry Beston, The Outermost House

I was passing out leaflets at Columbia University a couple weeks back, when a passerby who took a pamphlet on veganism and the cruel uses of animals turned back around to approach me. He said, “I am a vegetarian, so I understand not eating meat. But what is wrong with some of the uses of these animals? What is wrong with seeing eye dogs?” A valid question indeed, and one I had to pause for a moment to answer. I mustered up something along the lines of the ways that many of the seeing eye dogs in the industry are unfairly treated or neglected. “Oh, he said.” He seemed content with an answer he could relate to – suffering. In my experience leafleting and participating in animal rights advocacy, I receive a number of questions, many of them wanting to know the same thing, what is WRONG with the horse-drawn carriages at Central Park? And each time I (and I presume many other activists) offer similar answers, the suffering answer. But there is another layer, beyond the quick, violent spark of imagination that connects physical pain with empathy. And it has to do with power and structural inequality, and the use of one group for the benefit of another. And it has everything to do with feminism. Continue reading “We Are All Earthings: Speciesism and Feminist Responsibility Toward Animals by Amy Levin”

A Feline Petit Prince by Barbara Ardinger

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. We’re all the children of the Goddess, of our blessed Mother Earth.

I wrote recently about one of my all-time favorite books, Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a book I first read in my high school French I class. Le Petit Prince is said to be a children’s tale, a sort of fairy tale of the desert. Actually, it’s “about” many things: the value of childhood innocence, the incomprehensibility of serious adults (in his voyage from Asteroid B-612 to earth, the prince visits a king, a businessman, a drunk, and a lamplighter), the follies and the lessons of love. In the Sahara Desert, the Little Prince meets a golden desert fox that tells him that we see better with our hearts than with our eyes. The fox also asks the Little Prince to “tame” him, that is, to allow them to become familiar and friendly with each other.

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. Continue reading “A Feline Petit Prince by Barbara Ardinger”

Why a Kippah Reminds Me that Rationality Should Not Be Our Only Imago Dei By Ivy Helman

Neil Gilman in his book Sacred Fragments writes, “Since our faculty of reason is G-d-given, since it is the quality that distinguishes us from the rest of creation, and since all human beings share that same innate faculty, what better way to establish the veracity of a religious tradition than by demonstrating its inherent rationality?” To be fair, Gilman is not the only and definitely not the first to support this position. Many theologians, especially those influenced by various Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, have said the same thing. In the Roman Catholic tradition, Thomas Aquinas is adamant that rationality is humanity’s imago dei, how we are made in the image of God – what the beginning of Bereshit (Genesis) suggests. Descartes argues, “I think therefore I am.

Patriarchy emphasizes rationality as divinely given over and above other attributes that humans share with non-human life – like instinct, growth and maturity, life and death, memory, caring, empathy, dependence, interconnectedness, relationality, and communication (in all its forms, not just speech). Continue reading “Why a Kippah Reminds Me that Rationality Should Not Be Our Only Imago Dei By Ivy Helman”

The Way We Are Created: Eco-feminist Explorations of Bodily Hair by Tallessyn Grenfell-Lee

In the last few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about hair. It’s hard to avoid thinking about it when you are the greyest, hairiest woman in your suburban, north shore town. Myself and the other two ‘all natural’ women in town stand out like beacons among a sea of smooth, streaked, glossy manes of gorgeously cut and styled hair. And each spring, I stare at my shorts and tank top a little longer before wearing them around town. I’ll be perfectly honest – I don’t blame those slaves to fashion one bit. Although I try to avoid what I call the ‘crazy witch woman’ look, there’s no getting around it – smooth legs look slick, and dye smooths out those grey frizzies and takes a good ten years off your age!

So, it got me wondering – what does hair have to teach us as women of faith? Is there something unique about hair that causes us to fixate on it so much? And it occurred to me that hair actually symbolizes so much about our relationship with the Creation. We exist in an interconnected matrix of the living and non-living – as a matter of fact, we rely completely on the abiotic sphere, for life and as the matrix within which relationships occur. Our bodies exemplify that relational paradigm; our living cells are inseparable from the non-living matrices of our skin, teeth, and hair. From our living bodies emerges a non-living, interconnected medium, symbolic of the whole ecosphere.

Why Should We Care About Birds? By Carol P. Christ

I believe that we should we care about birds because it is right to do so. If we do not, we will contribute to extinction of species, and we will leave a diminished world to those who come after us. We must not give up hope that we can save the world for birds, for other wildlife, and for our children’s children.

On February 2, 2012, the International Day for Wetlands, the Greek government signed into law a Presidental Directive mandating protection of the small wetlands of the Greek islands. There is no assurance that this law will be enforced. There are still no measures in effect to protect most of the larger wetlands in Greece, even though this is required by the European law Natura 2000, which requires all of the countries in the European Union to protect bird and wildlife habitats.

When I became a birdwatcher, I could not have told you what a wetland is. Now I know that wetlands are fragile bodies of water shallow enough for wading birds from flamingoes to sandpipers to stand in “without getting their bottoms wet” while feeding on shrimp, small fish, frogs, and other watery treats. Wetlands often take the form of pools near the sea, but they also include the deltas at river mouths and seasonally flooded fields. In the twentieth century and today many wetlands were designated “swamps” and drained. Continue reading “Why Should We Care About Birds? By Carol P. Christ”