Earth-based spirituality – Page 4 – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST

This was originally posted on December 2, 2013

Olives are being harvested in the fields outside my town these days. We have been having the first rains of the season. The roads are wet and muddy, and the trees are partially shrouded in mist. The fields are spread with black plastic nets, and people are hard at work, the men hitting the trees to make the olives fall, and the women picking up the olives from the nets. The harvest will continue throughout the winter.

The olive press is busy. Cars and trucks come and go, unloading heavy bags filled with olives. These days the bags are white, made of sturdy woven plastic. In Crete this fall several of us bought canvas olive bags, hand-woven by women. These, along with baskets hand-woven by men, were still in use only a few decades ago.

olive harvest in Lesbos early 20th century by Theofilos Hajimichael

A friend who died a few years ago told me that “in the old days” there were no nets. The women and the children had to pick the olives up from the ground, often cutting their hands on thorns and stones. The nets are a Goddess-send. Between harvests, the nets are simply folded up and placed in the crotch of the tree. Here no one steals them.

In the fields where I walk some of the trees have enormous trunks. Some of them have two trunks, growing like sisters. Many of them are 300, some perhaps 500, years old. A man emerges from a field that has some particularly old trees. I ask him how old they are. “Older than I am,” he replies. “They were here before I was born. They will be here after I die.” Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST”

Healing Soul Loss Through Movement

We tend to imagine soul loss as something rare and dramatic, or reserved for those with deep trauma. But in shamanic paradigms across cultures, soul loss is a normal part of being human. The concept refers to moments when a vital piece of our essence disconnects, often as a survival mechanism. In psychology this is called dissociation. This can happen through shock, illness, relational rupture or subtle decisions we make to fit in, stay safe or succeed. A piece of us leaves in order to preserve the rest.

[Image credits: Detail from Anderson Debernardi’s painting “Iniciacion Shamanica”, seen at Exhibition Visions Chamaniques. Arts de l’Ayahuasca en Amazonie Péruvienne, ‎⁨Musée du Quai Branly, 2024. Photo by Eline Kieft.]

Honeysuckle Jewels and Women with Wings by Sara Wright

Initially I wrote this article for publication at a plant site but was forcibly struck by the reality that what we are doing to plants is exactly the same thing we are doing to humans, women in particular. Separating, Othering, Judging, Dismissing, Eradicating. I could go on here. When you read this article about invasives think about how we are being treated as women. It alarms me that no matter I turn I see the same story played out with humans (women and children suffer most overall), trees, plants, and the animals we are so busy annihilating if not physically then in some other monstrous way. Fill in the blank with your own story. Then imagine yourself as a bird with wings who carries the seeds of new life into unexpected places.

When I first moved to this area many years ago, I used to spend most of the time in the forests that surrounded my house except in the spring. Then I walked along what used to be a country road to see the wild trilliums, arbutus, lady slippers, bunch berry, violets and columbine that peppered the road edges.

All the trees and flowers were so plentiful and so beautiful that it took me a few years to pay closer attention to the bushes like the various pussy willows and wild cherries, beaked hazelnut, witch hazel and hobblebush that I also came to love.

Of Waterfalls and Wonder by Beth Bartlett

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder . . . . If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life . . . .”[i] – Rachel Carson

When I flipped my wall calendar on May 1^st, the accompanying photo was of a waterfall. My two-year-old grandson noticed it immediately, and said “waterfall!” I asked him if wanted to go see waterfalls, and ever since then we’ve been hiking local trails along rivers and streams in search of waterfalls. Fortunately, we live in a city and surrounding area with a wealth of waterfalls, many within a few minutes of our home. Each one is unique and changes with the volume of water as it varies from day to day.

I was lucky enough to be raised by parents with a love of waterfalls, so they were a staple of my childhood. We lived near waterfalls on the Cuyahoga River, where we would sometimes go for picnics and hikes, and our family vacations when I was young were often to visit waterfalls – Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite, Tahquamenon Falls in the UP of Michigan, and of course, Niagara Falls.

My Grandmother’s Pearls are Green by Sara Wright

“That move into mystery
is not an abandonment of
perception
into a cloud of unknowing.
It’s a move
into a different form
of knowing.”

Robert Macfarlane

I stepped outside when the sun was just rising over the horizon and low enough in the sky to create a play of shadow and light. This is my favorite time of the day to witness the astonishing beauty of the earth that is spreading her shimmering cloak around my feet… ‘oh, my grandmother’s hair, the words rose unbidden’. Chartreuse, plum, wine, lime, gold leaf and emerald canopies stretched across the brook blurring the leaves between birch, ash, beech and maples. The silvery water glistened, and I imagined myself flowing around those serpentine moss-covered banks listening to an ancient song that has been sung by water for more than 4 billion years. How I wish I understood what ‘ki’ was saying but I am no longer able to discern the language.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES?

This post was originally published on Oct. 28th, 2013

At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.

In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.

This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES?”

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

Combining ancient wisdom and western science

At age sixteen Beresford-Kroeger was graduated from her mentorship of the Lisheens and went on to become a scientist, learning medical biochemistry and botany. Eventually she saw that many of the things she learned from the Lisheens elders could be scientifically proven. This offered her delight and reassurance.

One of the first of these was the plant Chrondrus crispus or seaweed named Irish moss. Her Great-Aunt Nellie taught her that it cured tuberculosis and how to prepare and use the gel-like mucilage it released upon being boiled.

In the lab Beresford-Kroeger later discovered that this mucilage has antibiotic properties.

“The feeling this confirmation of Nellie’s teaching gave me is hard to describe. I loved my teachers in Lisheens, but I hadn’t completely ruled out the idea that the things I’d been taught there were just old superstitions. I needed to confirm them for myself. There was always the chance that there would turn out to be nothing of import in the plants they’d emphasized to me, and nothing more to the ancient knowledge than beautiful clouds of vapor”(96).

She began to understand that what she had been taught was an oral tradition and that it existed in no other format and that she was meant to be a bridge between “the ancient and the scientific”(97).

“My teachers in the valley might have indicated that a particular plant was good for poor circulation, which I’d taken to mean heart trouble. I would then know to keep a particular eye out for the presence of any chemical known to benefit the heart. “Well, Diana,” they might have begun, while cradling a small, five-pointed yellow flower in the crook of two fingers. “St. John’s Wort, as you see here, has a strong medicine for nervousness and mental problems.” I would later find out that St. John’s Wort contains phytochemicals such as hyperforin, which increase the effectiveness of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. The plant is as effective as many prescription anti-depressants, and may in some cases be more effective”(98).

Summer Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us be gentle with ourselves
as we cross the threshold
into summer,
as we both open our hearts to change
and open our hands to choice.
It is now that we both let things go
and celebrate what is flourishing,
what is thriving and growing
and calling us onward.
Let us be soft and supple,
luminous and languorous.
Let us practice the discipline of pleasure
and the liturgy of delight.
Let us protect wide margins for magic,
commit to our own life’s unfolding
and swim freely
in the current of the sacred
that is always available
to receive us
and welcome us home.

Today, I sit missing the orioles and thinking about cycles of change, how things grow and decline, and how we can choose to be present or not with what we see and feel. I tip my head back in the green filtered light of morning and discover berries beginning on the mulberry trees. The wild raspberries and blackberries too are tipped with small, firm caps of green. I am feeling the sort of overdue clarity that descends when I finally realize I can let something go, that not everything is mine to carry or mine to fix. I know that this clarity too will come and go, but for now, I welcome it, feeling the cool wind stirring my hair and brushing my shoulders as I enjoy the sunshine and the sound of hawks on the wing. There is a powerful hope in these blue sky days and for now, I bask in the sensation of both remembering and reclamation.

This year, as we tip into summer in the Northern hemisphere, the temperatures in my own Midwestern biome have been surprisingly cool, peaceful and rainy. In an era of climate change, this slow entry into the heat of the year has felt welcome and encouraging. Something that continues to inspire and teach me this year has been to start where my feet are, to return again and again to where I am on this earth and in my body. In a culture that encourages fragmentation and distraction, distance, discord, and dis-embodiment, this practice of return is an act of both rebellion and reclamation.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This year, sitting down to write and reflecting on the life lesson of starting where my feet are, I decided to go back through my past summer posts here to discover the other lessons I have learned from summers gone by. I chose thirteen lessons to share from past summer posts:

Empty Nest by Sara Wright

She fluttered
out of a woven
mossy green
basket
above the door
at dawn
the
nest
had fallen
onto granite
stone.
Oh
my drowning senses
couldn’t
contain such grief
every cell
drilled
deeper
I gasped
this
cavernous
hole
had no
bottom
I continued
to fall
Nature had
Spoken
my silent
plea went
unanswered
Ki’s* message
was clear
I replaced
the nest
added a
cedar shingle
enticing
the phoebes
to return
listened
to a vibrating
body
whose mourning
bell
rang clear
Nature
had Spoken
my beloved
birds
and those
I loved
were gone.

Dancing the Stories That Heal

After a near-death experience in 2019, I found myself immersed in myth and movement—sitting with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, dancing archetypes through Movement Medicine, and weaving stories like the Handless Maiden and the Red Shoes into my everyday life. This post shares some of the journey of how myths became embodied allies and an invitation for you too, to remember what lives in your bones.