Children – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Feminist Parenting About Sexuality – Hold on, because this is going to hurt by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I have been asked numerous times by numerous people over the years to write about feminist issues, especially regarding teaching kids about consent, pornography, and healthy sexuality. The reason I have not tackled this project yet is that I know full well most people—even people who think they want to know what I have to say, who think they probably agree with me to a large degree—will find what I have to say too overwhelming, depressing, and painful to handle.

People have interesting perceptions of me, which shape their expectations of what I will say. I am generally cheerful and affirming to be around. I frequently advocate for justice issues by speaking with passion and blunt honesty in ways people find uncomfortable or comforting, depending on where they stand on that particular issue. People want to feel safe and affirmed by me personally, but they also want me to keep speaking out about justice—so long as I do not make them too uncomfortable.

BFF – Or, The Delicate Dance of Female Friendship by Joyce Zonana

Like so many others, I learned this jingle, actually the opening of a lovely poem by Joseph Parry, during a brief stint in the Girl Scouts when I was nine or ten. I’m not sure I understood it then—what was wine, after all? what did it mean for it to “mellow and refine”?—but the words stayed with me, echoing unbidden through the years and shaping many of my choices.

Make new friends, but keep the old;

Those are silver, these are gold.

New-made friendships, like new wine,

Age will mellow and refine.

Like so many others, I learned this little jingle, actually the opening of a lovely poem by Joseph Parry, during a brief stint in the Girl Scouts when I was nine or ten. I’m not sure I understood it then—what was wine, after all? what did it mean for it to “mellow and refine”?—but the words stayed with me, echoing unbidden through the years and shaping many of my choices.

I’m sure it was thanks to these words that, three years ago, I found myself dancing at the wedding of my childhood best friend. Deb lives in Southern California; I live in New York. Yet I never had the slightest hesitation about saying “yes,” I’d attend. This was to be her second marriage, after a painfully failed first. For years she’d sworn she would never remarry; the wonderful man she’d been living with for two decades finally persuaded her. Clearly, a moment to celebrate. And although we’d missed all the other milestones in each other’s lives, I knew I had to be there for this one.

I’ve known Deb since we were seven; we’re now both in our seventies. For nearly forty years we had no contact—different cities, different lifestyles, different choices. But when Deb sought me out after Hurricane Katrina (I’d been living in New Orleans and somehow she knew that); when she came to see me in New York and we revisited our childhood haunts; when she took to phoning me regularly on Jewish holidays—I was irresistibly drawn back into this relationship that linked me not only with her but with my own self over time. (“For ’mid old friends, tried and true / Once more we our youth renew.”)

Continue reading “BFF – Or, The Delicate Dance of Female Friendship by Joyce Zonana”

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 start a family, is an oppressive position to occupy as well as the antithesis of the feminist movement. Though I am not typically a fan of tough physical, emotional, soulful labor, these two positions have been the highlights of my life so far.

My daughter embodies both my husband and me, physically. However, she is and will become her own person-soul. She is so young, but her soul is eternal, and has experienced eternity. I am here to help her navigate remembering who she is. She inhabits the intersection of Blackness, divinity, femininity, and infinity. Motherhood has greatly increased my capacity of appreciation for women and what women are capable of doing. Especially from the intersection of Blackness and woman-ness. From the capacity to create, labor, and deliver life to the task of raising Black children in a country that would have them annihilated, emotionally traumatized, and made to accept they are inferior.

Continue reading “Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga”

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 though our brains are incapable of seeing anything but the things we have left undone or done badly. And it is often excruciatingly hard to be a calm, patient parent when the kids start getting wild, or someone breaks something, or the <expletive> online form won’t <expletive> work on my <expletive> phone.

…Why is it so hard to feel “good enough?” Could it be because patriarchy benefits from making the female class feel constantly insecure and unworthy? Continue reading “Feminist Parenting Part 3—Les Misérable Mothers, why is this so %$@# haaaaard?! by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Feminist Parenting, Part 2 — What are Children? Are Children Human? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

The first thing I do in parenting courses is ask students their most basic beliefs about children. Students are startled by this opening slide, “what are children?” The obvious, knee-jerk response to the question, “Are children human?” is “Of course!” It seems like an unnecessary, bizarre question to ask.

However, many parents and societies treat children as though they are not fully human. Children are valuable, but they are not given the respect, trust, and basic human rights that we generally say humans should receive. Actually, most people treat children with coercion, humiliation, and distrust – as though children are willfully bad and thoughtless. Every time parents give a “consequence” (imposed punishment) for “bad behavior,” they are telling the child that she is a bad person, who needs to be “kept in line” by punitive measures. Every time parents tell children to eat this before they can eat that, or that they must put on a coat if they are to go outside, parents are sending the message that children do not deserve bodily autonomy, do not have the right to make basic decisions about their own bodies, are incompetent. That is anti-feminist parenting. Continue reading “Feminist Parenting, Part 2 — What are Children? Are Children Human? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Feminist Parenting: How you treat children is how you see yourself – Part 1 by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I lived with my mother until I was 11 years old. In all that time, she never once told me to “be good,” and I can count on one hand the number of times she ever punished me for anything. She was strict, and she often used the infuriating answer “Because I said so,” but she called us her “angels,” and we got along wonderfully.

Then one day, I was abruptly moved in with my father, against my will (and against my mother’s will). Suddenly, without understanding why, I was always in trouble. When I least expected it, I would be chastised and punished. I was not allowed boundaries – my clothes were borrowed without asking, my belongings given away to my half-siblings without asking, my mail opened and read, my phone conversations eavesdropped onto, and I was lectured regularly about the bad things I probably wanted to do and must not do and would be punished if I did them. Continue reading “Feminist Parenting: How you treat children is how you see yourself – Part 1 by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Poem: “Safer at Home in these United States” by Marie Cartier

Content Warning: Child abuse, domestic violence.

~~~~~~~

Safer at home is what we are told to do in these United States right now,

and the idea is you will not be able

to spread the virus, or catch the virus, if you are home.

I was never safer at home growing up

and sure, people talk about that—safer at home—

but it’s not safe for everyone, especially if you don’t have a home,

and certainly not one you are safe in.

I think of the girl I pass sometimes, walking my dog at night.

She puts herself in a green bag and curls around the meter block to be invisible and sleeps.

She pulls the bag over her head and draws the cord. I was afraid it was a large animal dropped off

until I got closer and saw it was a woman, the top of her head visible beneath the closed bag.

I must understand that she has no home, and she came from one at some time– that was not safe.

Do you remember the little boy? So cute—with a little man’s hat and

a twinkle in his eye, eight years old. His parents beat him repeatedly because he didn’t put his toys away correctly, and because they thought he was gay. He was eight. Continue reading “Poem: “Safer at Home in these United States” by Marie Cartier”

To Bless One Another, by Molly Remer

May you allow yourself to
taste your longings
and to bravely honor them.
May you make wise sacrifices.
May you trust in abundance.
May you savor the many flavors
of this sweet life before your eyes,
beneath your feet,
below your skin,
within your soul,
around your heart.

I had imagined making beautiful loaves of herbed and flowered breads, but instead we hold scraps of plain white biscuits in our hands. Homemade, yes, but not as seasonally resplendent as I envisioned. It is Lammas, the festival of First Fruits, a celebration of sacrifice, gratitude, abundance, and renewal. I remind my four children of these themes as we stand in our small family circle on our back deck at sunset. There has been rain and the air is cool and beautiful, unseasonably delightful for August. The mulberry trees are broad leaved and heavy, leaning over the rails of the deck, where the last of the blackberries also hang, black and red beneath rusted red, gold, and green leaves, spotted with last month’s heat, brambles twined through the railings in a way that delights me—the wild’s insistence on creeping steadily closer and closer to enfold our home.

I have made four extra little biscuits, round and a bit lumpy, an offering for each of the four directions. I extend my hand into the center of our circle, cupping one small round biscuit at a time. My children and my husband extend their hands over and under mine and we offer our gratitude into each morsel in turn, one for each direction and each element. For North, we speak of stability and strength, the health of our bodies, the safety and security of our foundation, the earth on which we live. For East, we speak of air, our mental states, how we will be mindful of how we speak and think and focus our energy and time. For the South, we speak of fire, of tending the flames of our inspiration, nourishing our passions, and watching for burnout. In the West, we speak of water, of being emotionally stable and loving. In the last seventeen years of parenting, if there is one thing I have learned is that rituals with children need to always involve action. The kids are eager to toss the biscuits into the air, in the directions we are honoring. In past years we have tossed pinches of cornmeal, at other times of the year grains of corn or flower seeds or dried herbs or petals, at the Winter Solstice we toss pieces of our annual golden “sun bread.” This bread, washed with egg and laden with butter is one we make together on solstice morning, shaping the smooth dough into a large sun face with a spiraled corona of rays. After it has baked, we offer scraps to the sun at noon, tossing them high into the air as we shout “Thank you! Thank you!” again and again into the crisp winter air. Last year, my garnet bracelet, a symbol of the path I walk with the goddess Persephone, flies off as I toss my sun bread and disappears into the waving stalks of wild grasses. We are never able to find it and the unexpected symbolism of Persephone becoming joined anew with the amber waves of Demeter’s grains delights me.

On the summer solstice this year, I made a cake in the shape of a honeycomb, decorating the hexagons with wild blackberries and rose petals. And, now on Lammas, there are these small white biscuits in our hands. My oldest son is almost seventeen. He is nearly as tall as his father, six feet. He has the biscuit for the south, which from where we stand on the deck is our house. He winds up his arm and lets the biscuit fly up, up and over the roof.

We offer our own small personal pieces of biscuit next, pinched as the first bite from each of our servings at dinner, as representative of a sacrifice we will make this season. And then, we cup our open hands close to our hearts and one by one we speak of what we are grateful for and what abundance we are welcoming, what we are making space to harvest in our open hands.

We join hands and sing, our six year old son requesting “We Are a Circle,” and following his lead, we sway from side to side as we sing, eventually all kicking our legs back and forth into the center of the circle and laughing. We say our closing prayer next, as we do each time we celebrate together: may goddess bless and keep us, may wisdom dwell within us, may we create peace* and then I extend my arms and gather them to me, for a large family hug. There is a sense of connection and renewal around us as we laugh and smile and I tell them thank you for participating.

This ritual was largely spontaneous, all I knew when I stepped outside was that we wanted to offer our gratitude symbolized by our four tiny loaves of biscuit-bread and that we wanted to acknowledge this next turn on the wheel of the year.

Several years ago, when I was still teaching at a local college, one of my students objected to the fact that material on working with LGBTQ clients was part of my class outline. She went through my personal Facebook page and those of my family members, where she noticed photos of the wedding ceremony I performed for my brother and his wife. A message arrived in my email: “by whose authority do you think you have the right to perform marriages?” she inquired. By my own authority, I thought, though in my reply I also cited that I am a legally ordained priestess and as such am recognized by the state of Missouri as capable of solemnizing legal marriages. Not much later, she dropped my class explaining in writing that to continue taking it would be to turn her back on Jesus Christ.

At mother blessing ceremonies, we often sing a song called “Call Down a Blessing.”** After one ceremony, I was asked, “but WHOSE doing the blessing?” and my answer was simple: We are. We are blessing one another.

These are radical acts. These are feminist acts. This is feminism and religion. To express gratitude for the earth, to name the elements as holy, to honor the cycles of the seasons and our lives, to design our own ceremonies, to hold our own circles, to be our own authorities, to bless one another and the spaces between us.

I have two teenage sons now, one seventeen and one fourteen. We have lifted our arms to the rising moon, tossed scraps of bread to the noontide solstice sun, and dabbed sweet spring water on one another’s faces in blessing since they were born. This is what they know.

And, even though they are now teenage boys, each night without fail they come to me and to their dad in turn to be kissed on the forehead in our nightly ritual, a benediction of love. Good night, sleep good, I love you, we each say. My seventeen year old usually drops his return kiss on the top of my head in my hair, speaking the familiar words back to me, good night, sleep good, I love you. Sometimes as I’m getting ready for bed, brushing my teeth in the bathroom, I look up to see him standing in the doorway, “mom,” he says, “did I forget to kiss you?” and I proffer my forehead, just in case we’ve forgotten. The boys each kiss their dad goodnight too and he them—on the forehead, a kiss, and the words, spoken and returned, good night, sleep good, I love you. Sometimes I think this is most potently feminist act of all, these two boys rapidly becoming men beneath our roof, going to bed each night with a kiss and the affirmation that they are loved.

Molly Remer’s newest book of poems, Sunlight on Cedar, was published in March. 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 a priestess who holds MSW, M.Div, and D.Min degrees and wrote her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses, original goddess sculptures, ceremony kits, mini goddesses, and more at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of Womanrunes, Earthprayer, the Goddess Devotional, She Lives Her Poems, and The Red Tent Resource Kit and she writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at Patreon, Brigid’s Grove, Feminism and Religion, and Sage Woman Magazine.

*Thanks, Carol Christ! We’ve used this family blessing to close our ceremonies for about ten years.

**Originally by Cathy Barton and Dave Para.

Community Immunity by Natalie Weaver and Nathan

My eleven-year-old son, Nathan, a fifth grader, is doing his best to deal with changes the coronavirus pandemic has brought to his life. Before this time, Nathan’s biggest daily worries have been keeping his school papers organized and staying on top of his sometimes rigorous homework assignments. Nathan has ADHD, which poses certain challenges to his learning and behaviors, making some tasks that have many intermediary steps nearly intolerable for him. Nathan’s learning is complicated by the fact that, while it has always been apparent that his learning style was different, his teachers and family (including me) have not always had the skills or patience to see Nathan’s exceptional gifts and insights from Nathan’s own point of view.

While his ADHD is a challenge, Nathan has a more ominous, lurking, daily concern. Nathan has a life-threatening allergy that has made him keenly aware that every visit to a strange house, every meal at a restaurant, every bakery product, every school treat, every friend’s birthday party, and even touching a doorknob or library book could mean a painful and terrifying hospital experience. Since his allergy was first discovered, Nathan has been keenly aware of dust, germs, and particles. He washes his hands to a fault, both as a result of ADHD compulsive behaviors and his deep awareness of his vulnerability to invisible, yet deadly particle foes. Nathan’s allergies also give him extremely sensitive skin, predisposed to eczema, severe rashes, dryness, and splitting, so gloves, soaps, and sanitizers are at once necessities and risks to the largest organ in Nathan’s body. Continue reading “Community Immunity by Natalie Weaver and Nathan”

Staying Un-Frozen by Sara Frykenberg

It is February 14^th, Valentines Day. So, today I want to explore my daughter’s love affair with Frozen; a story that I did not like, but that I learned to love by watching it through her eyes. A story which through her eyes, has taught me a lot about how to stay and be un-frozen.

I did not understand the phenomenon that was Disney’s Frozen in 2013. I did not like film’s premier song Let it Go, which you could hear e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. The film wasn’t even about Elsa; the queen with magical powers who sings this song while reveling in the new-found freedom of her isolation. It’s about Elsa’s sister, Anna, and her quest to find Elsa. So really, I thought, the song was misleading. I also didn’t like the ‘loveable Olaf;’ and while switching up the “true love’s kiss” narrative was a positive change for Disney (Anna saves herself and Elsa with her love, instead of that of a man), I just didn’t get the widespread appeal. Continue reading “Staying Un-Frozen by Sara Frykenberg”