Community – Page 8 – Feminism and Religion

Blinded by the White by Marcia Mount Shoop

White supremacy culture is on full display day in and day out in America. You don’t have to strain to see it—the President’s recent comparison of the impeachment proceedings to a lynching is the latest example.

Of course, even such an extreme example is still defended by white people of all shapes and sizes: senators, voters, talking heads, and the offender himself. The grotesquery of such a distorted perspective is emblematic of a sickness in our country to be sure.

But there are even more sinister forms of white supremacy that afflict our collective lives. They are harder for many white people to see. And they are, therefore, harder for us to believe. This kind of whiteness is the whiteness that blinds us. This is the whiteness that creates the conditions for the extremes to be mistaken for the whole problem. But more importantly, this is the kind of whiteness that creates the conditions for whiteness to be even more tenacious in some dangerous and annihilating ways.

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Untapped Communal Potential and Yom Kippur by Ivy Helman

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was the 9th of October 2019. On this day, Jews typically attend shul, offer various prayers, and participate in some form of fasting. The day is meant to be a reflection on the ways in which we, as individuals and as a community, have not been our best selves. In this reflection, we speak aloud our objectionable behavior and ask for the Divine’s forgiveness.

In some Jewish communities, the ashamnu prayer, which we use to acknowledge our harmful and destructive behavior, has been the same for centuries. Its particular form and composition is a stylized, alphabetized list of misdeeds. For example, one can find on the list stealing, lying, being rude, disobeying the Torah, participating in abominations, turning away from G-d and so on.

That being said, many communities have rewritten the prayer to speak to modern-day failings. For example, one can find concern for racism and anti-Semitism. Another ashamnu highlights the need to end war. I even found an ashmanu that was considerably more personal in its reflection. It problematized self-doubt and supported self-care. Continue reading “Untapped Communal Potential and Yom Kippur by Ivy Helman”

A Place Below the Cattails by Sara Wright

As a woman with Passamaquoddy roots when I first came to Abiquiu I was invited to participate in the six pueblo celebrations along the Rio Grande which made me feel blessed, grateful, included, and at “home.”

My own people’s lives and traditions were destroyed by colonial peoples centuries ago.

Yesterday I was invited to attend a river blessing on what I call Red Willow River a tributary of the Rio Grande by folks of Spanish and Indigenous descent who live here in Abiquiu on the mesa. These people, although local, are of mixed descent and do not follow the seasons and cycles of the year as the surrounding pueblos do. There is a heavy overlay of Spanish colonialism along with a restrictive (to me) Catholicism that sets this village apart from the pueblos.

Still, I was looking forward to this celebration

That was supposed to be led by Tewa Women United from the neighboring pueblos. It was a beautiful day, and of course we were all on “Indian Time” which means practically that ceremonies start when the time was right.

However, this blessing of the river didn’t come together at all. People milled around aimlessly. Some left. The children some of whom were dressed in regalia played for a while and eventually got hungry. Some complained they had to get back to school for a game.

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Call Out Culture vs. Mentor Culture: Which one will save us from the apocalypse? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Have you felt the satisfaction of putting someone in their place? Have you ever felt the rush of power that comes with delivering a cutting set-down? Have you ever felt a glow of pride after making fun of a horrible person or group, and having the people around you laugh appreciatively?

I sure have. In high school, the bully-types in my classes learned not to pick on me to my face, and not to pick on my sister when I was in the room. I got damned good at snide, witty comebacks, and so people stopped messing with me. That kind of success was incredibly rewarding. It was a useful skill I honed over the years, so I could trot it out whenever needed. Rare these days, but my sister still occasionally says, “I’m just glad Trelawney’s in my corner.”

Oh, it feels good to WIN, to experience verbal conquest, and to know I’m justified in using my tongue as a sword, because that person SO deserved it! Ah, the adrenaline, the afterglow, the notch in my belt!

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On Ki Teitzei: Rules and the Importance of Religion by Ivy Helman

The Torah parshah Ki Teitzei, Deutornomy 21:10 to 25:19, contains 74 of the 613 commandments/mitzvot found in the Torah. These mitzvot cover a wide range of topics and concerns. For example, there are mitzvot about how to sow and harvest your fields and others about aiding those in need, including animals. Some of the mitzvot describe how and why divorces can be decreed, to whom can one charge interest, and the punishments for various crimes. There is a mitzvah concerning the requirement to erect a fence on one’s roof to prevent people from falling off, one about not wearing clothes of the opposite gender, one about returning and/or caring for lost property and another detailing from what type of material one’s clothes can be made.

The parshah is literally one mitzvah/commandment/rule after another. Some of the mitzvot seem logical and good for the community. For example, help an animal whose been given a load too heavy for it to carry. Hold onto someone’s property if you find it, so you can give it to them the next time you see them. Build a fence on your roof so that no one falls off. Continue reading “On Ki Teitzei: Rules and the Importance of Religion by Ivy Helman”

The Truth About Humans by Natalie Weaver

I have greatly enjoyed an odd little book I read over the summer. It is Lucy Cooke’s The Truth About Animals (Basic Books, 2018). Cooke takes us through a journey of animal behavior, chronicling the curious narratives that naturalists, philosophers, theologians, and other high-thinking professionals impose on animals to render their behaviors meaningful, moral, and relevant. Cooke shows us how tempting it has been historically for people to seek and discover confirmation of human values in all those other pairs so happily coupled on Noah’s Ark.

It has often been an important tool for feminists, as with other sets of thinkers, to make these connections as well. And, as one familiar with the classical charges that women are more inherently corporeal than their spiritual-intellectual male counterparts, and that therefore women are more animal than the more accurately “human” form that their male counterparts represent, I understand the feminist investment in nature. I appreciate that it involves a sort of ownership and redefinition of the slur; an acceptance of space and place as limited and essentially animal; an awareness of environmental sustainability; a deep sense of connection to the continuum of creaturely being that is the giant ecology of our planet.

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Movement of Moving and Spiritual Journey by Elisabeth Schilling

It looks like it is time again for me to pack up and drive a few hundred or more miles to a new destination, a place I will finally try to plant roots, this time offering commitment + endurance, hoping to build a life of more balance and authenticity. I assume I will need a constant reminder of gratitude, quelling the entitlement that can bubble up when I think “this should be easier.” I’m not sure when, why, or where I’ve picked up that refrain, but I see it in others and myself and wish for an alternative.

With the help of several people, I’ve secured a full-time college teaching position on a beautiful college campus of a kind of institution I am certain is doing its part to heal the world. At least that is what I feel when I serve at a community college, a place where I feel inspired and challenged by students who have a diversity of needs. I’ve been teaching in such institutions for so long, I’ve fallen in love and know, by experience, that I can help in such spaces.

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“If All Knowledge Must be Reinterpreted, Why Not Religion?” Says Islamic Feminist

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Vanessa Rivera de La Fuente is Muslim, feminist, and a human rights activist
Photo: Personal archive

Background: Journal O ‘Globo, one of the most important newspapers in Brazil, belonging to the transnational media group of the same name, published this interview with Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente on Islamic Feminism. Given its relevance to the discussion on the subject, it was translated by prominent Islamic feminist and scholar Keci Ali to share it with English-speaking readers.

The Muslim women’s movement has different agendas in accordance with the reality of each country. In Latin America, the Muslim Vanessa Rivera fights against prejudice about Islam.

by Isabela Aleixo*

Vanessa Rivera de La Fuente is Chilean and Muslim. Besides being an academic researcher, she’s also an Islamic feminist engaged with questions of gender, human rights, and social development. Vanessa has wide experience in social projects in Latin American countries.

In an interview with CELINA, she discusses the prejudices that Muslim women face in Latin America, explains the movement’s demands, destroys stereotypes, and declares: “I’m a woman and I demand to be treated as a person.”

Do you consider yourself an Islamic feminist? Why?

I consider myself a feminist woman, who lives feminism in all the distinct facets of her life: I’m Muslim; I’m a single mother; I’m a professional woman, an academic; and I’m a women’s rights activist. I’m feminist with all my life experiences. I think being a woman in male-dominated society is itself a political fact, so everything that I am as a woman can be resignified by feminism, including being Muslim. Islam is integrated into my life and my political struggle, which is intersectional. It’s based on the radical idea that all women are people and we deserve equal rights and a world free of violence.

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Gentle Moments in a Violent World by Marcia Mount Shoop

“Be gentle with yourself.”

It may be some of the most redemptive guidance I have ever received. And I share that invitation daily with people in painful situations.

“Be gentle with yourself.”

In a world seemingly hell bent on self-destruction, being gentle even for a moment is a radical act of resistance. A moment of tenderness. A moment of trust. A moment of attentiveness to need.

But really, what good does gentleness do in a world as brutal as ours can be? How does being gentle provide any kind of answer to the assault of being commodified or objectified or betrayed or assaulted or oppressed or erased or abused or discarded or exploited? Continue reading “Gentle Moments in a Violent World by Marcia Mount Shoop”

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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