Books – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

Temple Magdalen by Elizabeth Cunningham

The Women of Amphissa, 1887, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Since I began writing for FAR in July 2012, I have written about Mary Magdalen, or excerpted a passage from one of my novels, near or on her July 22 Feast Day. For why I made the controversial choice to depict her as a prostitute, see last year’s post. The below excerpt is from The Passion of Mary Magdalen. I made this selection in remembrance of all the refugees in the world today. In this passage, Judith, a Jewish widow whose family was driven from the land by tax collectors, returns to the place where Maeve (my fictional Celtic Magdalen) and her friends have recently founded a Temple to Isis on the outskirts of Magdala. Maeve has just invited Judith to join them. (Edited for brevity.)

She stared at me, her eyes full of anger and longing.

“I will not be a slave and a whore where I was once a wife, the one who made the challah bread, who said the Sabbath prayers over it. This was our place, my husband’s and mine. We brought the best we had to the temple, the finest oil and wine, the unblemished kid—”

“Goats? You kept goats? You know how to make cheese?”

She sat quietly for a moment before she answered. “How can I live here with you?” she wondered. “I don’t understand.”

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Beaches and Books by Esther Nelson

Even though I’ve traveled and lived throughout much of the world, I’ve never thought of any one place or geographic location as home. I have always felt a little envious of people who claim to have a strong, visceral connection to a particular house, garden, village, landscape, or city in a specific, geographic area.

We often use the word home to indicate a space where we feel accepted, safe, nurtured, loved, and at peace. Although I’ve never sunk deep roots anywhere I’ve lived—or even visited—I feel most grounded when standing on a sandy beach anywhere in the world, overlooking an expansive view of the ocean. Perhaps the cowboys in American folklore and legend felt “home, home on the range where the deer and the antelope play,” but I don’t. I am much more at ease with home, home on the beach where the wind swirls the water and sand.

I often hear the beach calling me. Sometimes I listen and allow myself to fall under her spell and into her fluid embrace.

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Lessons Mothers Might Teach Their Daughters by Elisabeth Schilling

There might be lots of lessons to consider. These lessons might have holes, for I’m not a wise sage, and I’m not really even a mother. As I am a couple of years from 40, I think about what lessons I would teach my daughter if I had one, lessons to honor her physicality, lessons to create space for her soul. What do you think of these lessons? Would I be a bad mother?

Be self-sufficient, and work hard and do it early.

I think there is much to say about a woman making her own money so that she can be in relationships that honor her tendencies and desires and contribute in those relationships financially. I’m not sure why it is, but I still feel that we are in a time where most men are more given the idea they should be self-sufficient and work hard and early to do it and many women, although perhaps a hint of this, would not have this as the core of who they are. A woman should have her own money so that she can be free.

Find a spirituality and a community that allows you to be confident in your internal wisdom and body and support learning about life skills.

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Advocating Respect for Goddess by Susan de Gaia

I served as general editor for the recently published Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions: Faith and Culture Across History (2018/19 ABC-CLIO). It was an honor and a pleasure to work with a hundred and thirty wonderful scholars, many with expertise in female divinities. In working with a publishing house on this project, I negotiated for the capitalization of Goddess and other terms for the Female Divine.

‘I recommend not capitalizing “goddess”’ – was the first reply I got on this question. It came from Anne, the development editor assigned to the project. Negotiations ensued. Continue reading “Advocating Respect for Goddess by Susan de Gaia”

Marianne Williamson. . . I’m Sacredly Smitten by Elisabeth Schilling

I caution myself to be critical and nuanced. I’m sorry, folks. I just haven’t had such dazzling hope or remote interest in politics since. . . well, since I was a puppet junior high evangelist for an independent candidate my Dad liked, and I don’t want to try to remember who it was. But I was 13. And I’m 38 now. What hath made this cold, indifferent, anxious millennial’s soul to warm?

I am into mindfulness, contemplative studies, Eckhart Tolle, Don Miguel Ruiz, Nhat Thich Hanh, the kind of comparative religious studies scholar who has eastern spirituality leanings, so when I heard Marianne Williamson was a presidential candidate, I got curious. I’ve not read A Course in Miracles (although I think I’ve avoided it for the same assumptions Williamson says she initially made) or actually any of her books. Williamson is Jewish and has a pluralistic perspective when it comes to noting the basic underlying wisdom of all religious and spiritual beliefs (I realize we have discussed this before when I called them “wisdom traditions” – is any tradition actually wise/can you separate the violence, oppressions, and misogynies of them?).

She speaks in cool, rushing waters and has a platform that still sounds “political”/political (she breaks down what this word actually means in her latest CNN Town Hall) and is spiritual and based in a rhetoric of love. After the complete loss of hope in what [T . .] represents, and the not-yet healed wounds from [B. . .], she sounds like a reasonable adult, much like Obama did during his years. I wonder if they are friends? They should be.

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Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) by Barbara Ardinger

Note: This story was originally posted early in 2016. I’m posting it again because, thanks to the state of UNkindness the Abuser-in-chief has pasted all over the semi-civilized Semi-United States, we need lessons in kindness more than ever before. I bet you agree with me!

“Curses on that grasshopper!” exclaimed the ever-busy Madame Fourmi. “All he ever does is play. He’ll be sorry when winter comes.”

And so it went. Every day, Mme. Fourmi spent the morning scrubbing her front steps. And Monsieur Cigale?

“Partaaaaayyyyy!” Every day, he sped by on his skateboard. “Hey, Auntie Ant, stop cleaning the concrete and come and play with us. We’re gonna start a band!”

“Not on your life,” muttered this grandmother, most of whose conversations with her many daughters and granddaughters consisted of instructions on how to properly clean their homes and hills and how to prepare and store food for the winter. “Life is serious business, it is, it is. We need to plan ahead.”

Continue reading “Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) by Barbara Ardinger”

I Celebrate Love by Elise M. Edwards

Happy Valentine’s Day! I know, I know… so many of us do not like this holiday. It’s too commercialized, we say. We don’t need card-makers or florists to tell us how or when to show affection. Some of us don’t like Valentine’s Day because it reminds us of loves we have lost or never found. I get it. This day can seem shallow, overhyped, and falsely sentimental. It can be lonely. And yet, I won’t let today pass without celebrating and honoring love. Love is too important to concede to commercial interests.

Love, in its many forms, keep us alive and able to endure. Love is powerful because it is expansive, growing in unexpected places and ways. We tend to separate our celebrations of romantic love, friendship, familial love, self-love, and religious devotion. We make distinctions between our valentines and “galentines.” Rarely do we shout for joy in ecstatic worship while also celebrating the passionate longings of our innermost desires. But occasionally, in my religious tradition, we let our disparate loves come together. We unite them on holy feast days, enjoying the sensual pleasures of good food and company to mark spiritual occasions. So that’s my inspiration. Today, I’m celebrating love by reflecting on various forms of love merged together and sharing insight from poets and mystics about the power and beauty experienced in love.

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Ancient Dreamer by Elizabeth Cunningham

Raised view fallen autumn leaves deciduous trees

The poems below are excerpted from my new (I hope forthcoming) collection, Tell Me the Story Again. Ancient dreamer’s voice is one among many voices including sorrow singer, temple sweeper, sword woman, morose fool, merry drunk, grey cat and mouse, stone mountain, skeleton woman, mother rain and many more. The voices speak from a time perhaps just after (or long before) our time, in a real and magical world.

I chose to excerpt ancient dreamer’s poems because winter is the time, in Celtic lore, of the Cailleach, the old one, the divine hag. When I began writing the poems in 2014, my mother-in-law, then age 101, was in the last stages of her life. She slept and dreamed most of the time, and I would sit and daydream with her. She died two months before her 102^nd birthday. When I took up the collection again in 2018 to complete it, ancient dreamer remained a strong presence and has the last word.

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Creatrix Mundi: Speculating The Godma by Isabella Ides

What does it mean to approach the idea of a Godma, a mother-of-all, as an act of the imagination, as a pure act of speculation? I particularly love the word speculator: one who is mining for the diamond, one who is going off the map, a voyager, a voyeur, a seer. A spiritual adventurer. A gambler, a trader in divine currencies.

I am a writer of fictions—speculative fictions. I am a poet-philosopher. Acts of the imagination and divine currencies are my trade.

I like this phrase: In the beginning was an of the imagination, a movement of mind. Or better—an act of procreation, a giving of birth. I love how words lead an idea deeper into the woods. A chance to get lost in variations and find new places to hide and seek. Perchance to meet an angel. Or a wolf. Or yourself in disguise. Continue reading “Creatrix Mundi: Speculating The Godma by Isabella Ides”

When “The Storm Left No Flowers” – A Review by Sara Wright

During the last year I have been struggling with the catastrophic effects of Climate Change like never before as I witness the continuation of a drought that is withering plants, starving tree roots, shriveling our wildflowers and wild grasses, leaving our mountains barren of snow, and changing the face of the high desert for the foreseeable future. With forest fires leaving me literally breathless from plumes of thick smoke that turn the sun into a ball of orange flames at dawn, unable to cope with 100 plus degree heat, my body forces me to surrender: I will not be able to make my permanent home here. Instead I will migrate like the birds do – from south to north and back again.

Coming to terms with the ravages of Climate Change brought me to my knees; it has been one of the most difficult adjustments I have ever had to make. I mourn the death of the trees, plants, the loss of precious frogs and toads, insects, birds, lizards – every plant and creature is under attack and few of us can thrive (let alone survive) in such an unforgiving climate. Continue reading “When “The Storm Left No Flowers” – A Review by Sara Wright”