Earth-based spirituality – Page 49 – Feminism and Religion

A Winter Woman by Molly Remer

“When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive…

Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future.”

–Patricia Monaghan, Seasons of the Witch

When the wheel of the year turns to winter, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for significant de-cluttering—my eyes cast about the house for things to unload, get rid of, to cast away. I also search my calendar for those things which can be eliminated, trimmed down, cut back on. I think it is the inexorable approach of the winter holidays that prompts this desire to withdraw, as well as the natural rhythm of the earth which so clearly says: let things go, it is almost time to hibernate.

This shift toward winter is a time of discernment. A time to choose. A time to notice that which has not made it through the summer’s heat and thus needs to be pruned away. In this time of the year, we both recognize the harvest of our labors and that which needs to be released or even sacrificed as we sense the promise of the new year to come. Continue reading “A Winter Woman by Molly Remer”

Jewish Folklore and Women’s Clothing: When Things are the Text by Jill Hammer

Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The Jewish Museum has long been a favorite museum for me. My wife and I took our daughter to this particular exhibit because we knew she’d like it. The exhibit is entitled “Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress from the Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.” It consists of many, many garments created and worn by Jews, from Moroccan wedding clothes to German prayer shawls to Yemenite amuletic (meant to protect the wearer) dresses. Accompanying the garments were placards explaining the folk traditions giving rise to the various garments. What I realized (again) after viewing the exhibition was how much I could learn about the culture of Jewish women, and Jewish culture in general, by looking at things, not texts.

The sacred texts and laws central to Jewish life, while they certainly discuss Jewish women, tend not to be created by or for Jewish women. This means many aspects of how Jewish women thought or acted (before the present day) are obscured. However, these garments were created by and often for Jewish women, and their shapes and symbols tell a great deal. For example, the Moroccan Jewish wedding clothes I mentioned were embroidered with spirals, representing (according to the accompanying written material) the spiral of life. These spirals were also found on Jewish tombstones. The spirals resembled, to me, the spirals I’d seen carved on stone at Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland—the ancient symbols of life and journey. I was amazed to see them in a Jewish context. Another dress that mixed Sephardic and Moroccan style also had spirals featured prominently.

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Asking for Help by Carol P. Christ

I climbed trees and rode my bike and roller skated on sidewalks for hours on end when I was a child. As an adult, I have always been physically strong without having to work at it. Nor have I had to think much about my health. I have been able to trust my body to do pretty much everything I wanted it to do. I am also fiercely independent. And I don’t always like to be touched because my body is extremely sensitive to other people’s energies.

On the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete I was always the first one in and out of the caves and usually the first or one of the first up and down the mountains too. This changed when I injured my knee a few years ago in one of the caves and then six months later re-injured it in a fall on my front steps. I was told not to stress my knee by the pharmacist, and as a consequence stopped walking and doing yoga. I began to lose my physical strength. Continue reading “Asking for Help by Carol P. Christ”

Forgiveness and Faith by Chris Ash

Christy Croft Some of the most brutal weapons ever used against me were crafted and wielded by my own hands, forged in grief and self-loathing out of the words of others. In my better moments, I recognize that while another’s frustration with me frequently may be justified, any cruel words towards me never are, and are more a reflection of their speakers’ relationship with themselves than of any facts about me.

The parent who criticized me for being a “crybaby” saw in me a freedom of emotion that challenged the stoic denial of their own pain. The friend who criticized my optimism as “naïveté” and ignorance resented their own lack of hope about their future. The loved one who lashed out against my precious family deeply wished to experience that profound sense of belonging and acceptance that they’d not yet allowed themselves to feel.

In my heavier moments, when I’m questioning my choices and feeling the weight of responsibility that comes with adulthood, parenthood, and awareness, those words slither back into my brain, taking hold of my memory and trying to convince me of my own inadequacy and brokenness. Hopeful Me looks at my traits – my sensitivity, optimism, and devotion to loved ones – as strengths to be honed into tools I can use for my good and that of the world. Overwhelmed Me looks as these same traits as evidence of my damage – artifacts left behind by childhood trauma and occasional adulthood bouts of depression and anxiety. Continue reading “Forgiveness and Faith by Chris Ash”

Season of Change – Transformation by Judith Shaw

Fall is here, the leaves are changing color, the days are shortening and our ongoing natural cycle of change and transformation now moves toward the dark, quiet days of winter. Both the idea and the process of transformation have fascinated me my whole life. Blame it on my Scorpio rising. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, the planet of transformation and regeneration. Diving deep and surfacing has always been my mode.

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“Queen Sugar:” Must-See Ecowomanist TV by Elise M. Edwards

Have you been watching “Queen Sugar”? It is a thoughtful, compelling, and gorgeous TV show that evokes ecowomanist sensibilities.

“Queen Sugar” is a television drama in its second season on OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s network. It was created by celebrated filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who is also the show’s executive producer. The show has an all-female directing team and an inclusive crew. Like many of the original series on OWN, “Queen Sugar” features a predominately African-American cast, and like many other programs on the network, it delivers content intended to stir the viewer’s soul. But notably, “Queen Sugar”’s soulful messages are not mediated by the cadre of life coaches and inspirational leaders often seen on Oprah’s network. Instead, it is the fictional Bordelon family who invites us to reflect on their world and ours. The series’ three main characters, Nova, Charley, and Ralph Angel, are siblings who take over their father’s sugar cane farm in Louisiana after his death. Their narrative and the lush cinematography that captures it offers viewers the opportunity to consider the complexity, joy, and hardship of African-American characters who are rarely depicted on screen. The show’s themes and aesthetics are expressive of ecowomanist spirituality.

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The Gendered Cost of Fast-Fashion by Elisabeth Schilling

This last week, my students watched True Cost (2015), a documentary about the environmental impacts and human casualties of the fashion industry. According to the film, fashion is the number two most polluting industry in the world (oil is number one) and more lethal than some of us know. This is due to the incredible rate of people in the Global North consuming cheap clothes. I used to buy clothes weekly in graduate school, accumulating 100s of pieces, some that I never wore.

I never really thought about where my clothes came from (well, I would buy most of them second-hand, but they still had a former origin). I did not think about the pesticides flooding millions of acres of cotton and seeping into the ground and causing brain tumors and early deaths to farmers, and I did not think about the (mostly) women who made my clothes in other countries in poor working conditions, their own countries being polluted by factory run-off in their sacred rivers and the soil from where they fed their families. Continue reading “The Gendered Cost of Fast-Fashion by Elisabeth Schilling”

Badb, Goddess of Life and Death by Judith Shaw

With the ongoing occurrence of huge hurricanes, floods, mudslides, earthquakes, possible nuclear war and more in both the US and worldwide it seems that the wrath of the Goddess has been awakened. I felt the need to revisit the Celtic Triple War Goddess, The Morrigan. One of Her aspects is Badb, which translates as “Hooded Crow” and “One Who Boils.” She signifies fury, rage and violence. She brings war, death, chaos but also enlightenment, life, and wisdom. Continue reading “Badb, Goddess of Life and Death by Judith Shaw”

Honey: A Thousand Flowers by Mary Beth Moser

Today I am finishing the last bit of the honey I hand-carried home from my most recent trip to Trentino. Sun yellow in color, it is made from the nectar of mountain flowers. Its label tells its origin—di montagna, of the mountains, and its type — mille fiore, often translated as “wildflowers.” Literally, however, it means “a thousand flowers.”

The valley where my maternal grandmother was born, Val di Sole, is renowned for its honey. In Croviana, one of the villages in the valley, new honey is celebrated in July with a sagra, a communal food festival. There are more than a dozen different types of honey from Trentino, including apple, chestnut, and rhododendron. These are plants of place – nature’s gifts that appear in the folk stories and are present in everyday life. Continue reading “Honey: A Thousand Flowers by Mary Beth Moser”

A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier

Kim and I with our hosts and new family friends

I’ve known for years and years that on my wife’s, Kim, bucket list was to see a total eclipse of the sun. She began over a year ago researching weather conditions and making reservations, researching camera equipment, buying the special eclipse lens so that she could shoot the sun.

By the time we left on our road trip to visit first our tribe of sister family in the Midwest at an annual gathering, and then to visit various friends, she had four reservations for the eclipse viewing—all in different states. She patiently explained to me (again) that she would be checking weather conditions and “chasing” the eclipse if need be. I understood, because as I said, I’d heard about the eclipse for a while (lol). I knew we’d be making friends with the NASA weather page which I checked continuously for the last two weeks. I would put in the different locations where Kim had made reservations over six months ago, cities near the center line of totality: Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri…then there were cloud predictions in all of those states and it seemed she should have stayed on the west coast and gone to Oregon or Wyoming. Continue reading “A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier”