Earth-based spirituality – Page 46 – Feminism and Religion

“The Burning Lava of a Song” by Joyce Zonana

Aurora’s autobiographical narrative is a passionate paean to poets as the “only truth-tellers, now left to God”; she celebrates them as agents for personal and social transformation. As we come to the end of this National Poetry Month in the U.S., where truth is under siege, it’s worth recalling Aurora Leigh and its daring exploration of poetry, gender, divinity, and social justice.

jz-headshot I was in graduate school when I first read Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s fiery 1856 epic about a young woman claiming her vocation as a poet despite Victorian society’s patriarchal strictures. The poem was not on any assigned reading-list; I’d simply stumbled across it while doing research for my dissertation. The opening lines brazenly assert the speaker’s authority and ambition:

OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others’ uses, will write now for mine,–
Will write my story for my better self . . .

Encountering those words, I was immediately possessed by Aurora’s voice and vision, a welcome change from all the male poets and critics I’d been reading. I devoured the verse novel’s nine books in one night. The poem became the centerpiece of my dissertation, and I studied and enthusiastically taught it for years.

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Dragonfly, Guide to Transformation and True Sight by Judith Shaw

Dragonfly, dragonfly darting quickly hither and yonder, up and down, left and right – a transparent shimmering spark with effervescent wings, representing the dreamtime and the illusionary nature of reality. Dragonfly, dragon – both immortalized in mythology worldwide.

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Stories the Stones Tell by Sara Wright

A couple of days ago I was climbing a mesa with my friend Iren who is “a guide to the wild places” – those places off the beaten track where stories are told by the stones and the Earth that supports them.

As a severely directionally dyslexic person who cannot tell her left from right navigating this hidden world would be impossible without Iren’s deep knowledge of this land, her expertise, her extraordinary sensitivity and her love for Nature. No words can ever express my gratitude for this friendship without which I would feel bereft.

As we climbed through mountains of human garbage and four wheeler tracks we discovered potsherds at our feet. Picking up the predominantly black and white pieces for inspection I found myself wondering about the women (and children) who gathered the clay, shaped it into pots, and fired the vessels to store food. There are so many untold women’s stories hidden in these clay fragments… Continue reading “Stories the Stones Tell by Sara Wright”

We All Come From Stardust by Judith Shaw

“We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff,” astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously stated in one episode of his 1980’s series, Cosmos. These ideas set my mind on a voyage through eternity filled with vast darkness illuminated by billions of specs of light.

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A Victory for the Environment: For Birds and for Us by Carol Christ

On February 20, 2018, the Greek government issued a Presidential Decree mandating the formation of government bodies to monitor and protect the more than four hundred bird and wildlife habitats in Greece designated as part of the European law Natura 2000. This decision came after decades of government inaction regarding the enforcement of the Natura law it accepted as part of its entrance into the European Union.

Whether the Presidential Decree will result in protection on the ground remains to be seen, but it is an important step in the right direction. The Presidential Decree was issued after years of negotiations initiated by the European Commission to compel the Greek government to comply with the law. A Complaint to the European Commission regarding failure to protect the Natura wetlands of Lesbos on which I was the first author formed part of the basis of these negotiations.

a ditch drains a wetland to produce agricultural land

Almost as soon as I became a birdwatcher in 1999, I began to notice the degradation of bird habitats by dumping, drainage, and building, especially in wetland areas. Wetlands are seasonal bodies of water created by winter rains that dry out in the summer heat. Generally, they are shallow, which means that they are a perfect stopping over place for migrating birds. The most common visitors to wetlands are wading birds that stand in shallow pools and puddles without immersing their bodies in the water. Lesbos, the island where I began to watch birds, has some of the most important wetlands in Europe, visited by birds migrating from Africa to Europe in the spring for rest and feeding. Because of this, Lesbos is also a destination for birdwatchers.

Wetlands are not only important for birds. In rainy periods they act as a sponge between rivers and the sea and dry land, absorbing water that otherwise could cause flooding. The devastating flood damage to New Orleans in recent years is the result of building on wetlands. Similar damage occurs regularly wherever wetlands are drained, including on the island of Lesbos.

In 2001, I wrote a petition that was signed by over 600 birdwatchers and others urging the Greek government to protect the wetlands of Lesbos. I presented it at an open meeting in May 2001 organized by the Mayor of Kalloni, Lesbos, Aris Eleftheriou, to explain the plan to protect the wetlands of Kalloni which had been funded by the European Union. Instead of being congratulated for his work and vision, the mayor was met by an angry mob. Many of the Natura wetlands are privately owned fields traditionally used for grazing sheep and goats. As local economies were transitioning to tourism, landowners did not want any restrictions placed on their ability to drain and build on their land.

flamingos are now permanent residents of Lesbos

It was in this context that John Bowers, a longtime birdwatcher in Lesbos, an environmental economist, and the first to sign my petition, formed Friends of Green Lesbos, an international internet-based group dedicated to protecting the wetlands of Lesbos that soon counted over 800 members. I became its Vice President. In 2003, Friends of Green Lesbos, in co-operation with Idatinos, a local environmental group, drafted an internet letter and petition, that was automatically sent to the Greek government every time it was signed, asking the Greek government to fulfill its legal responsibility to protect the wetlands of Lesbos. The government responded that it was required to enforce the Natura law even though no specific Greek law had been passed specifying how this was to be done. A committee in the department of building and land development in Lesbos was created and charged with the responsibility of protecting the local wetlands.

We did not understand that this committee would not be monitoring the wetlands on a regular basis, but would only respond to complaints. This was clarified at a meeting organized by World Wildlife Fund in Athens in 2005. I was then put in touch with a new local environmental group, Nautilos en drasi that was also formed to save wetlands. Together with WWF, we began to draft complaints about the degradation of individual wetlands. These complaints, numbering well over fifty, were all decided in our favor. Fines were issued, but there was no mechanism to ensure compliance. Numerous meetings with the Governor of the island resulted in promises that were not kept. We finally realized that he was more interested in currying favor with landowners and developers than in enforcing the law.

In 2008 while lecturing at a conference in Ireland, I met a Green Party member of the European Parliament who encouraged me to write a complaint to the European Commission. After six months of intense effort, I completed a formal complaint of over 100 single-spaced pages, supported by two large files of documents, detailing the government’s failure to protect the wetlands under the Natura law. It was immediately approved by Friends of Green Lesbos and Nautilos en drasi, but it took over two years for World Wildlife Fund and Hellenic Ornithological Society to revise and sign it.

The complaint was submitted to the European Commission in September 2011. After several requests for additional documentation, the Commission found Greece in violation of the Natura law in Lesbos in October 2014. In August 2016 the Commission informed us that it had made our case part of horizontal negotiations with Greece regarding its failure to protect all of its Natura sites. The February 2018 Presidential Decree is the fruit of these negotiations. It is certain that the European Commission will continue to watch the situation in Greece to ensure that the government follows through with the monitoring and protection mandated by the new law.

This has been a long and tiring and often discouraging struggle of nearly two decades and it is still ongoing, but if the end result is the protection of all of the Natura sites in Greece, it will have been well worth it.

Others involved in Natura struggles in Lesbos besides John Bowers and myself include Eleni Galinou, Michael Bakas, Costas Zorbas, and Stellios Kraonakis, and in Athens, Foteini Vrettou, George Chassiotis, and Elias Tzirtzis of World Wildlife Fund Greece, and Malamo Korbeti of Hellenic Ornithological Society.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer and educator currently living in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s new book written with Judith Plaskow, is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. FAR Press recently published A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess. Carol has been leading educational tours based on the religion and culture of ancient Crete for over twenty years. She is active in the Green Party Greece and has run for office in regional and national elections. Carol’s photo by Michael Honegger.

Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Carolyn Lee Boyd When I raise my eyes to a bird soaring over me in flight, I am no longer bound to the Earth by gravity. I stop my round of daily tasks and widen my vision to view myself and our world from above through birds’ eyes. For just a moment, as I observe beyond my usual narrow horizon, I perceive truths about myself and others that have been hidden and grasp wisdom that has previously eluded me.

From Neolithic times onwards in cultures stretching across the globe, as described by Judith Shaw, bird-shaped goddesses have embodied life, death, rebirth, and more. More recently, as noted by Miriam Robbins Dexter, these beautiful winged beings were perceived of as monsters and flying through the air was one of the accusations made against the women persecuted as witches in the Burning Times. What greater demonstration could there be of the intense terror this powerful relationship between women and birds creates in those who demand dominion over women’s bodies and souls?

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Horse – Symbol of Power and Freedom by Judith Shaw

The horse was first depicted in art about 32,000 years ago on the cave walls of southern France and northern Spain. Though archeologists disagree as to whether the paintings are realistic depictions or symbolic markings, many concur that they are both. Perhaps our ancestors applied a numinous meaning to the horses and the symbols painted on those ancient cave walls.

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To Love the Earth and Fear the Forest: My Paradox as an Ecofeminist by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I am privileged to live near a wood where I can walk with my family, my dog, or alone – when I have the courage. I fear the woods, see; not because of physical danger from humans or wild animals, at least, not really. I fear the woods because time in the wilderness forces me to think and feel things I normally can distract myself from.

It took me years to figure out why I resist going to the woods alone. I’m not really alone, of course – there are other people and their dogs on the trails, not to mention all the wild animals and plants whose homes I am visiting. But without a walking companion, sometimes, something rushes in, something that crushes me, so that I can’t breathe. Is it Nature’s Wall of Grief, as nature connection mentor Jon Young posits – the stark reality of the ecological crisis and my own disconnect with my earthly roots? Is it the summation of all my past grief and trauma, or a fear inherited from my ancestors? Is it whatever feelings of fear, inadequacy, or pain that I usually process in smaller, more manageable quantities? All of the above? No, no… it’s much safer to wait until someone wants to go with me. Continue reading “To Love the Earth and Fear the Forest: My Paradox as an Ecofeminist by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

Gifts from the Sea by Molly Remer

“Island living has been a lens through which to examine my own life…I must keep my lens when I go back… I must remember to see with island eyes. The shells will remind me; they must be my island eyes.”

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Each winter, we travel with our family to a small island in the Gulf Coast outside of Alabama and spend a month living on the beach. There is something about being on an island that quite literally transports you into another world. The sensation of stepping out, stepping off, and stepping into is palpable as we cross the bridge to the island and settle into the slow, quiet rhythm of island life, guided by the tides, the moon, and the rising and setting of the sun. Our sleep and waking schedules change. Our priorities shift. Our to-do lists become very short. While we enjoy a creative, home-based life and business at home in Missouri, there is something incredibly freeing, and clarifying, about laying everything aside and having the biggest item on the schedule be a long walk on the beach (we walk from two to five hours each day). We actually bring our business along with us in a travel trailer, so we aren’t truly “off work” during this month, but instead of making everything as we go, we only sell the inventory we’ve already completed and brought with us, which leaves us with many extra hours a day compared to our work at home.

As I shed layers of myself at the beach, watching dolphins, running with my children, picking up shells, walking hand in hand with my husband into the setting sun, life feels simple, and what I need and want feels very clean and very clear. My intense self-motivation and drive softens, my itch to get more done and to make more lists fades away, and I am left with the core of myself and discover, anew, how very much I like her.

This year, the morning after we arrived at the island, my husband and I headed to our favorite part of the beach where the beachcombing is the best and the shells are the biggest. We were stopped on the road at a little guard tower and told we could not continue. When we inquired why, the sour-faced man told us with the smirk that the beach was “gone” and it had been destroyed in a hurricane last fall. He clearly took delight in breaking the news to us and very much enjoyed the act of turning us away.

We returned to our beach house in a state of confusion and shock. Our long walks on the beach, our hopes for the new treasures we would discover, the part of the island we so love and have so many happy memories of, all swept away. We walked on a different part of the island feeling a genuine sense of distress and grief. How could the beach just be gone? Does the island now just abruptly drop away into the sea? We feel a sensation that something had died. As we walk, we decide that the “gift” in this disappointment is that we will now explore and learn from different parts of the island than we are used to and that we can find new things to do and love while here, that we need to release our attachment to past visits and the ways things used to be and enjoy discovering what is right here, right now. But, then I say that I do not want to rush to “make it all better,” but instead I would like to just sit with and acknowledge the grief, and loss, and disappointment, rather than hurrying to turn everything into a lesson.

We walk in silence for a time and then realization dawns. There is no way the beach we long for can actually be “gone.” There is still a road visible headed in that direction and many dump trucks and earth-moving equipment driving back and forth. That part of the beach is damaged, we realize, but the facts we can see with our own eyes do not point to the total erasure of it as suggested by our power hungry little friend in his road blocking shed.

Back in the beach house we google to discover that yes, the beach sustained significant hurricane damage in the fall and restoration efforts are underway. The correct description from the guard should have been that the beach is “closed for restoration” and not “gone.” We continue to try to accept our “gift” of making new discoveries in the face of disappointment, but a few days later we decide to ask at the rental company if there is a way we can still go to the closed part of the island. They are able to give us a pass to enter it, and so, in fact, we are able to walk on our favorite part of the beach after all. The parking lot is damaged, but the beach itself is still very much there and very much alive.

This is a new gift, I muse. Rather than accepting our initial grief and disappointment, we tried again. Sometimes, you do not actually need to accept no for an answer, but you can push a little more and get what you want. What if we had just turned away in grim acceptance and “gone with the flow” instead of twisting a little harder and asking for what we want? I try to reconcile the two lessons—the letting go and the pushing, our refusal to let go. And then, a third lesson: not everything has to be a lesson, sometimes things just are.

My favorite shell in the world is from a moon snail. Round, smooth, and beautiful, curling in a wave to a perfect tiny spiral in the center, with colors ranging from brown to pale blue, many of the moon shells we find are small, the size of a quarter or smaller. My holy grail (holy snail) is a palm-sized moon shell that will fill my hand. In the morning as we walk on the previously forbidden part of the beach, I stop to take a photo of one of my goddesses on a piece of faded green driftwood. I am in that state of total presence that I experience often in our island walks, the complete immersion in the moment, stripped of all other purpose or task, but simply myself, walking on the beach. It is a type of what I call: “stepping through,” like I have stepped out of myself, out of reality, and into a different plane of relationship with the natural world. We find several fighting conch shells fairly close together and I say to my husband: “what we really need to do is find where the moon snails come up.” I turn away from the driftwood to continue walking and just as his foot begins to come down on the sand I see it…right below where his foot is poised to step, the distinctive curve of a huge moon snail shell, half-buried in the sand. I grab his arm and pull him back, making an indistinct babbling sort of squeal in my throat. I dig it up and there it is, a sun-bleached moon snail shell that exactly fills the palm of my hand. I laugh with joy and exhilaration and nearly cry in my delight. I tell my husband I feel as excited and happy and full of wild euphoria as if I’ve just given birth to another child. This is one of the best moments of my life! I crow, laughing semi-hysterically, this ranks right up there with the time we saw the otters at the river!

Then, realizing what I have said, I laugh some more. Is it sad, perhaps even pathetic, that some of the best moments of my life have been seeing wild otters and finding perfect shells? No, I decide, I adore being the kind of person who sees with island eyes and who discovers the best moments of her life simply by paying attention to what is happening on the shore.

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 and teaches online courses in Red Tent facilitation and Practical Priestessing. She is a priestess who holds MSW, M.Div, and D.Min degrees and finished her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses, original goddess sculptures, ceremony kits, and jewelry at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of Womanrunes, Earthprayer, and The Red Tent Resource Kit and she writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at Brigid’s Grove.

Children of German Immigrant Farmers in Cherry Ridge: American Stories by Carol P. Christ

In my genealogy research, I traced my father’s grandmother, Catherine, to her roots on the Iloff farm in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of New York City. Catherine’s parents were Henry Iloff, who emigrated in 1841 from St. Nicholas, Saarland, and Catherina Lattauer who emigrated in 1845 or 1846 from Ober-Floerscheim, Hesse-Darmstadt. They were married February 2, 1846 at St. Matthew’s Church in “Little Germany” on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

In 1850, Henry and Catherina purchased land in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, where they built the farm that remained in the family for a hundred years. In 1851 Catherina’s sister Agnes Lattauer Schweizer emigrated with her family from Ober-Floerscheim to Cherry Ridge. The Schweizer farm also remained in the family for a hundred years.

I had been told about the family Henry Iloff had with two wives who were somehow related: nine children with his first wife and nine with his second over a forty year period–fourteen of whom were living at the time of his death in 1889. I was shocked to learn that when his first wife died in 1869, Henry married his wife’s sister’s daughter Johanna Schweizer–who was half his age and his children’s cousin. I suspect that the marriage was considered scandalous in a conservative farming community, and that it did not sit well with the children of the first marriage, four of whom left the local area. Nonetheless, Henry Iloff was elected to the prestigious position of Wayne County Commissioner a decade later. Continue reading “Children of German Immigrant Farmers in Cherry Ridge: American Stories by Carol P. Christ”