Category: Childhood

Empowering Toys and the Problem of Class Divisions by Katie M. Deaver

I recently noticed that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about financial security, the way class systems work in the United States context, and how these types of realities inform my feminism.  Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that for the first time in my life I am not a student with multiple part time jobs, but rather am a “real” adult working full time at a job that offers retirement and medical benefits.

As I’ve written about before, I grew up in a poor family in rural Wisconsin and as a result I am often hyper vigilant about my finances.  While I likely go a bit overboard when organizing my budgeting, balancing, saving, and spending this type of organizing is something I can control.  The simple act of paying a bill, or determining how much I can spend on groceries this week gives me a profound sense of safety because for the first time there really is enough coming in to support my basic needs.

Continue reading “Empowering Toys and the Problem of Class Divisions by Katie M. Deaver”

Gratitudo et Fortitudo by Natalie Weaver

One of the bigger problems with being the only Classics major at a Jesuit university is that all my friends were fairly old men before I had even reached drinking age. Now, they are pretty much gone back to the cradle of the grave, save one, who is on his way to a remote retirement home. As a young woman, my coterie wasn’t a terrible problem for me because some deep part of my psyche had been convinced, since I was about nine years old, that I myself was an old man. I sort of felt at home reading about the Second Punic War and identifying with the sexual ramblings of the naughty old Latin poets, noting between me and my teacher-purveyors of such materials only the occasional, modest differences in skin elasticity and dental sheen.

I never felt like a girl, although, to be sure, one’s ability to assess such a thing is limited to one’s observations and conceptions about what, for example, a girl is or does or thinks. I found myself “ungirlike” in comparison with my conceptions of “girl-ness,” perhaps most notably in the operations of my mind. I felt “old” and “serious.” I remember contemplating with enormous focus the abstractions of total being and absolute nothingness from my nursery room. My big wheel was solid black, and my Dad got me into fishing and hooking live bait. I had read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil by eighth grade; my favorite book was Camus’ The Plague until it was replaced by Hesse’s more romantic investigations in Narcissus and Goldmund; and I spent my days writing philosophical poems and trying to teach myself to paint in the style of Chinese ink and wash painting. I couldn’t stand Sweet Valley High novels, and even my doll play was odd. I had a gay Ken doll, whom I named David, and his best friend was a shaven-headed Western Barbie, whose backstory was a woeful tale of drugs and topless dancing.   Continue reading “Gratitudo et Fortitudo by Natalie Weaver”

The End is Nigh by John Erickson

How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

John Erickson, sports, coming out.When I was a little boy I was terrified that I would live to experience the end of the world.  Whether it was by an asteroid, Y2K, or a zombie plague, I would make myself sick by picturing these horrible things that could befall me and my family.  Although I was a precocious child, the crippling fear that would lurch its way up my stomach and into my head would sometimes make it impossible to sleep at night.  While I like to think I grew out of that phase, I now sit here feeling that way again.  I’m crippled with fear that the end of the world is at hand and there may be nothing we can do to stop it.   How will the world end? No, it isn’t Lucifer himself coming from hell to bring in the end times, it is someone far worse, and his name is Donald Trump.

By the time you’re reading this post, the first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will have occurred and, no matter where you look, the aftermath will haunt us for weeks to come.  We will either be sitting here, coaxing in the sunlight that Clinton has, in proper fashion, just goaded Trump into revealing to the 100 or so million viewers that will have chimed in to viewing how completely dangerous he truly is, or will we be scurrying to uncover decade old bunkers that were used during the 1950s and the Cold War to take shelter from the fallout to come should, Donald Trump become the next President of the United States. Continue reading “The End is Nigh by John Erickson”

I Used to Paint All the Time by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver editedI used to paint and draw all the time as a child.  I thought about majoring in art as a college student, but I went to an institution that did not have any applied arts courses in the curriculum.  I had gone to college on a scholarship that I could not duplicate elsewhere, so I settled for a number of art history classes and gave up any formal pursuit of art.  However, when I had my children, I rediscovered art.  More accurately, I did not rediscover it so much as I fell in love anew.  For, I found in working with my children a tremendous liberation.  It did not matter if it was “good” or not, had the “right” form or not, used the medium “correctly” or not, or said something “properly.”  I learned all over again that people could have hearts for heads; skies could rain jellybeans; and skin could be blue just because you like it that way.

Doing art with my children opened up my courage to recognize creative expression as a sacramental act.  Both when it is done for overtly sacred purposes as well as when it is done for more secular ones, art of all media can be an outpouring of the spirit into the material world that allows one to say to another: here I am, this is what I have felt, did you see this, I’ve been there too.  Once freed from norms about how something ought to be used or made or discussed or interpreted, art has the potential to become revelatory, both of the human and also of the divine (or, perhaps better, of the human as divine). Continue reading “I Used to Paint All the Time by Natalie Weaver”

What If Jesus Had Gone to Daycare? by Katey Zeh

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As a maternal health advocate, I cherish the season of Advent as an opportunity to connect a beloved Christian story to the lives of women today who struggle to bring new life into the world under horrific circumstances. Every year I write something about Mary’s pregnancy and birth. In many ways she is no different from the “Marys” around the world who are young, poor, and unexpectedly pregnant, and who go on to give birth in unclean environments. I often pose the question to communities of faith, wasn’t the Christmas miracle equally that Mary survived the birth? How different would Jesus’s life have been if he’d never known his mother?

I continue asking these questions, but after my daughter was born last October, I have found my Advent reflections shifting to mirror my own parenting experiences. I began to think beyond Mary’s birth and into her early months of motherhood. One morning last December, after a particularly awful night’s sleep, I came downstairs to hear “Away in a Manger” playing on the radio. When it got to the line “But little Lord Jesus/No crying he makes,” I rolled my eyes dramatically and pictured Mary doing the same as she bounced a screaming baby Jesus in her arms. Continue reading “What If Jesus Had Gone to Daycare? by Katey Zeh”

All We Need to Make Magic by Molly

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Photo taken by my 12 year old son this month.

“The tools are unimportant; we have all we need to make magic: our bodies, our breath, our voices, each other.”

–Starhawk

As November drew to a rainy close, we had a small family full moon ritual on our back deck and incorporated a simple gratitude ritual into it. The sky was overcast so we couldn’t actually see the moon, but my four-year-old daughter wanted to get out glow sticks left over from Halloween. We had so much fun dancing around with them and making patterns together in the dark night. We sang a chant I recently made up:

Hallowed evening
Hallowed night
We dance in the shadows
We offer our light.

We did a simple gratitude practice by placing corn kernels in a jar, one for each thing we are grateful for from the past month. We started out slowly and taking turns and then we sped up and the gratitude offerings came tumbling out, over one another. Even the one-year-old added corn, rapidly yet with great concentration to make it actually go in the jar. We drummed and called out, “We are ALIVE! We are GRATEFUL! We are POWERFUL! We are CREATIVE!” When we finally decided to close our ritual and go back inside, the moon peeked out from behind the clouds to briefly say hello and it felt like a blessing on the magic we’d just created together.

As we went back inside, I felt relaxed, happy, and connected. For being something very simple, not particularly pre-planned, and semi-chaotic, it felt like one of our deepest and most connected personal family rituals. The quote above from Starhawk floated back into my mind and I reflected that when I try “too hard” to get things ready for a perfect ritual, I often end up feeling a disappointed. Sometimes I feel like giving up on holding ceremonies with my children entirely. Last year, as we prepared to walk our Winter Solstice Spiral, the baby had a poopy diaper that extended up his back. I often end up snapping critically at whomever isn’t doing it “right.” My boys make fart jokes. My husband gives long-suffering sighs. Our circle looks more like a lopsided peanut. Our humming together discordant and off-key. As we lie on the ground together on the Spring Equinox to do our “Earth Listening” practice together, the kids wiggle and fight, pushing one another off the blanket and exclaiming in loud voices so no one can hear what we’re listening for. We listen to a shamanic drumming CD, but the only one to reach a trance state is the baby as I pace back and forth with him in a baby carrier. The four year old ends up crying because she doesn’t see anything and she wanted to see something cool. Martyrpriestess emerges to complain that she doesn’t know why she even bothers trying to do nice things for anyone if this is how you’re all going to act.

I recently finished reading Under Her Wings: The Making of a Magdalene, by Nicole Christine. A theme running November 2015 007through the book was the concept of “As Above, So Below and As Within, So Without.” I read this book as part of my research for my dissertation about contemporary priestessing and as I read, I kept thinking, I want to hear from the Mamapriestesses, from the Hearth Priestesses! Where are the other practicing priestesses with children at home? I noticed in Christine’s book that the bulk of her work took place after her children were grown and, to my mind, she also had to distance or separate from her children and her relationships in order to fully embrace her priestess self. I notice in my reading and my research group that many women seem to come to priestess work when the intensive stage of motherhood has passed, or they do not have children. Is there a very good reason why temple priestesses were “virgins” and village wise women were crones? Where does the Mamapriestess fit?

As I read Christine’s book and witnessed her intensive self-exploration, discovery, and personal ceremonies and journeys, I realized that in many ways personal exploration feels like a luxury I don’t have at this point in my parenting life. How do we balance our inner journeys with our outer processes? Christine references having to step aside and be somewhat aloof or unavailable to let inner processes and understandings develop, since our inner journeys may become significantly bogged down in groups by interpersonal relationships, dramas, venting, chatting, and so forth. For me, this distance for inner process exploration isn’t possible in the immersive stage of life as a mother. And, yet, I also know in my bones that I’m not meant to give it up. How does the As Within and the So Without actually work?

I return to our Full Moon gratitude ritual. My oldest son, 12, whose height is rapidly extending into manhood, totes his tiny brother on one hip with practiced ease, offering his own glow stick and helping my little one hold his into the air. He expresses gratitude for the fun he’s been having this month with his new video game and, “I’m grateful for you for doing things like this with us, Mom.”

My second son, 9, my bravest child, crawls willingly into the darkness under the deck to retrieve lost glow sticks, poked purposefully down porch cracks by the one year old. He returns, triumphant, holding the bundle of sticks aloft.

My daughter, nearly five, tips her face back, looking up at me with eyes alight, “I’m glad to be a Goddess Girl!” she calls out…

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Molly has been “gathering the women” to circle, sing, celebrate, and share since 2008. She plans and facilitates women’s circles, seasonal retreats and rituals, mother-daughter circles, family ceremonies, and red tent circles in rural Missouri. She is an ordained priestess who holds MSW and M.Div degrees and she is currently writing her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly’s roots are in birth work and in domestic violence activism. She has worked with groups of women since 1996 and teaches college courses in group dynamics and human services. Molly is the author of Womanrunes: a guide to their use and interpretation, Earthprayer, Birthprayer, Lifeprayer, Womanprayer, and The Red Tent Resource Kit. She has maintained her Talk Birth blog since 2007 and writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at her Woodspriestess blog. Molly and her husband Mark co-create original birth art jewelry, figurines, and goddess pendants at Brigid’s Grove.

Note: If you have children at home, I’d love to hear from you about the Mamapriestess topic! If you do not have children by choice, how does this play into your spiritual work? If you do not have children and that is not by choice, how does this play into your spiritual work?

Additional resources:

That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

MarieCartierforKCETa-thumb-300x448-72405What follows is an excerpt from my current project—a novel I have been working on for over ten years. It is finished—sort of— in various journals and I am currently trying to pull them all together. These are the opening pages. Thank you so much for your support of my work. The novel is called- That Christmas Morning Feeling.

Book Number Sixteen

This is how I feel about incest, I mean learning to talk about it…speak Incest, as in capital “I” – Incest, like French, German, – Incest…right? Because you don’t talk about it, you talk it…you, as in you alone, you talk it; you use it in a sentence. “This is what happened to me…” And no one talks back.

And, why compare it to French or German? There are whole countries who will talk back to you if you speak French or German. Learning Incest is like learning Martian – you think to yourself, maybe there’s a planet somewhere where learning Martian would be useful…but it is certainly not here… no one can speak Martian here, correct your grammar, help you write a poem, check your iambic pentameter…whatever. My point is, learning Martian, well, if you learned it…how would you ever know if you were speaking it right? If someone on Mars could actually understand you? Of course, you wouldn’t know. You would just have to really love Martian enough to learn to speak it – even though…And then, of course, assume that you might meet and if you ever did meet a Martian and you had invested all this time in learning Martian just in case you would ever run into a Martian, you’d hope that he would understand you. Or she. Whatever. Continue reading “That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”

Four Days of Bliss (or How I used The System to beat The System) by Vibha Shetiya

Vidha SI’m not particularly fond of my periods – they’re painful, full of cramps. But they are a part of who I am, and I’m not going to apologize for them. We women, especially those of us belonging to the sub-continent, have been shamed or embarrassed into silence, while being reminded that motherhood is the most exalted position a woman could ever hope for. I mean, isn’t that paradoxical – if it weren’t for the bloody nemesis (pardon the pun), we would never get to experience motherhood.

I grew up in a Western environment (in southern Africa) where “period” wasn’t necessarily synonymous with repulsion. But when I moved to India, the land of my birth, soon after my “life-altering” experience, things began to look different. I came to realize that I ought not to be like the neighbour girl who was so besharam, or shameless, that she insisted on announcing her monthly ignominy to the world by refusing to conceal the fact that she had indeed been at the pharmacist’s to buy sanitary pads. Why, the pack of pads, sealed in newspaper and carried in a little black plastic bag was right there for the entire world to see on her ten minute walk back home! I gradually came to understand that “those four days” were taboo – do not speak of “it,” do not make it obvious even if you are writhing in unbearable pain, do not contaminate sacred space with your womanly profanity. Continue reading “Four Days of Bliss (or How I used The System to beat The System) by Vibha Shetiya”

Loss of Soul: Identity and The Stories We Tell by Kaalii Cargill

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The effects on the world of the loss of the Feminine, the loss of Soul, are incalculable. Instinctive knowledge of the holy unity of things, reverence for the interconnection of all aspects of life, trust in the power of the imagination and the faculty of the intuition — all this as a way of relating to life through participation rather than through dominance and control, has almost been lost. We can see the effects of this loss of soul everywhere today, not only in the devastation and pollution of vast swathes of the earth, but in the unhappy, impoverished and hopeless existence that people endure in the hideous and ever-expanding suburbs of our cities, in the increase of diseases like cancer, diabetes and mental illness — particularly depression. The old are neglected and even ill-treated in a culture more interested in achieving targets than caring for people. The young are offered nothing to aspire to beyond the material goals promoted by the media.

– Anne Baring, 2013. Awakening to the Feminine. Archive Publishing. Extract from Chapter 10 in “The Dream of the Cosmos: a Quest for the Soul.”

Continue reading “Loss of Soul: Identity and The Stories We Tell by Kaalii Cargill”

Sanctuary of Echoes by Natalie Weaver

Natalie WeaverTomorrow I will have the unique opportunity to hear my son recite a poem I wrote before his class. The students were invited to select a poem to memorize and perform along with props or costumes as suited the material. The only conditions were that the poem be a minimum of twelve lines, published in a book, and in good taste. A poorly chosen poem, he said, would result in perpetual detention.

I was excited when he expressed enthusiasm for the assignment. I asked him what kind of poem he would like to learn. Something humorous? Something dramatic? Something tragic? Something about love? War? I read to him first those famous opening words of Virgil’s Aeneid: Arma virumque cano (I sing of arms and a man…). I thought surely he would be intrigued by the rhythm and the promise of such a tale. He asked for some other options, so I presented favorites from the Medieval Hebrew canon. I taught him Adon Olam, since he was curious about learning poetry in a foreign language. He liked it quite a bit and learned how to pronounce the Hebrew, but this was not his choice. I pulled out selections from Catullus’ eulogies for his brother. I searched Sappho for something playful. We read more contemporary options from the usual suspects in an anthology of poetry that I had used in a college course: Frost, Dickinson, Poe. I even introduced him to the seductive “duende” of the great early 20th century Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in his Poet in New York.

Continue reading “Sanctuary of Echoes by Natalie Weaver”