Category: Egalitarian Matriarchy

The Ninth Touchstone: Repair the Web by Carol P. Christ

As I reflected on the Nine Touchstones again recently, I was pleased to discover that the first and the eighth touchstones are articulations of the central values of egalitarian matriarchal societies. Few of us live today in egalitarian matriarchies, and it would not be possible for all of us to return to cultivating the land. I offer the Nine Touchstones in the hope that they can help us to find a way to express and embody the values of egalitarian matriarchal cultures in the modern world. The touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, personal, communal, social, and political.

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web

The ninth touchstone is based on the Jewish “commandment” to repair the world. It is derived from the mystical tradition in which prayers were directed towards reuniting the broken sherds that became the created world with their transcendent source. It was reinterpreted by liberal Jews in America as a commandment to create justice in this world through social and political action. I rephrase it as “Repair the web,” to underscore to the need to repair not only the human community, but also the web of life in which it is situated.

To nurture life is to protect the weak and the vulnerable and to create the conditions in which human beings and all beings can experience the joy of living.

To walk in love and beauty is to love yourself, other human beings, and all beings in the web of life, and to appreciate the beauty that is found in all of our diversity and difference.

To speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering is to recognize that everything is not love and light in the modern world: to speak the truth about that which is broken is the path to healing.

To take only what you need is to recognize the interdependence of life: when we take more than we need, we take from others without reason.

To think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations is to recognize that what we do today will affect the next generations and the planet as a whole, in good ways, and in bad.

To approach the taking of life with great restraint is to think about what we eat, never to kill unnecessarily, and not to react with violence when there are other ways to resolve conflict.

To practice great generosity is to recognize that none of us has the God-given right to own anything, and to learn to give and receive in the grace of life.

To repair the web is to always act to create a better life for ourselves, for the next generations, and for the species with which we share life this earth.

The Nine Touchstones help us to imagine the way to a better world. Can we join together to create it?

 

*Parts of this blog will be included in my keynote address at The Parliament of World Religions on November 5, 2018 in Toronto, Canada.

*Also see: Ethics of Goddess Religion: Healing the World , Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality,  Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing,  Trust the Knowledge that Comes through the Body: Heal Yourself, Heal the World,  Speak the Truth About Conflict, Pain, and Suffering, Take Only What You Need, Think About the Consequences of Your Actions for Seven Generations, Approach the Taking of Life with Great Restraint,  Practice Great Generosity

 

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer, activist, and educator currently living in Lasithi Prefecture, Crete. Carol’s recent book written with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, is on Amazon. A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess is on sale for $9.99 on Amazon. Carol  has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Bakas. Carol will be speaking at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Re-Imagining Conference at Hamline College in St. Paul Minnesota on November 1 and 3 and at the Parliament of World Religions in Toronto, Canada on November 5.

 

 

 

Practice Great Generosity by Carol P. Christ

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web

In Rebirth of the Goddess, I offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.

The eighth touchstone asks us to practice great generosity.

Confronted by the great generosity of village Cretans who have far less than I do, I was provoked to examine my own values. Having been brought up in a family that always had enough to eat but often did not have enough to buy me everything I wanted, I was taught to “count my pennies” and to “save for a rainy day.” I began babysitting at the age of ten and as a teenager used my savings to buy fabric and patterns and sewed almost all of my own clothing. My brother and I fought constantly about who would get “the biggest piece” of whatever sweet was on offer.

The habits I learned early have served me well in some ways. I do not spend more than I have, and I have invested wisely. I am for the most part a kind person, but the practice of great generosity in regard to the money I have does not always come easily to me. Sometimes I give generously to charities, but I am not consistent. (Note to self: you can do better.) Moreover, it is not part of my cultural upbringing to offer to pay for someone else’s meal or to give gifts, not only on birthdays and holidays, but every day.

I sensed that the generosity I experienced among the Cretan people had ancient roots. Now I understand that this practice may have been passed down from egalitarian matriarchal cultures in which the generosity associated with mothers was considered to be the highest value—to be practiced not only by women but by men as well, not only in the home, but in the world as a whole. It is my belief that before war and the spoils of war became commonplace, people were valued not by what they had (or hoarded) but by what they were willing to give. These values were, and in some places still are, practiced in rural farming communities.

In a recent weeks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been telling Americans that democratic socialism “means that we should guarantee basic elements of dignity and human life: education, health care, housing, food. It’s about guaranteeing a minimum level of dignity in the United States.” I have often said that I would be more than willing to pay higher taxes order to ensure basic dignity to all Americans. (I am not happy about paying taxes to the war machine: Barbara Lee speaks for me.)

In response to Republican attacks on socialism, Paul Krugman examined democratic socialism in Denmark. Krugman noted that:

American politics has been dominated by a crusade against big government; Denmark has embraced an expansive government role, with public spending more than half of G.D.P. American politicians fear talk about redistribution of income from the rich to the less well-off; Denmark engages in such redistribution on a scale unimaginable here.

Moreover:

Danes are more likely to have jobs than Americans, and in many cases they earn substantially more. Overall G.D.P. per capita in Denmark is a bit lower than in America, but that’s basically because the Danes take more vacations. Income inequality is much lower, and life expectancy is higher.

Growing up, I was taught that giving to others requires selflessness and personal sacrifice. In other words, giving is not always “fun.” My parents and my church were wrong about that. Unless we are completely cut off from our inborn capacity for empathy, most of us would be much happier knowing that our neighbors and others with whom we share the world have enough to survive and thrive. Krugman finds that:

The simple fact is that life is better for most Danes than it is for their U.S. counterparts. There’s a reason Denmark consistently ranks well ahead of America in measures of happiness and life satisfaction.

Growing up, I was also taught that “it is better to give than to receive.” I didn’t believe that then, but I am beginning to believe it now.

The eighth touchstone asks us to practice great generosity.

Doing so will not only help others. It will also make us happier to be alive.

 

Also see: Ethics of Goddess Religion: Healing the World , Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality,  Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing,  Trust the Knowledge that Comes through the Body: Heal Yourself, Heal the World,  Speak the Truth About Conflict, Pain, and Suffering, Take Only What You Need, Think About the Consequences of Your Actions for Seven Generations, Approach the Taking of Life with Great Restraint

 

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer, activist, and educator currently living in Lasithi Prefecture, Crete. Carol’s recent book written with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, is on Amazon. A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess is on sale for $9.99 on Amazon. Carol  has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Bakas.

 

 

Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality by Carol P. Christ

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web

 

In Rebirth of the Goddess, I offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The touchstones are not commandments delivered from outside the world, nor are they accompanied by the promise of reward in heaven or the threat of punishment in hell. Rather, the Nine Touchstones are based upon observation of the world and rooted in the insight that human and other beings are connected in the web of life. They are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.

As I review the Nine Touchstones two decades after I first intuited and reflected on them, I marvel at my younger self. When I write, I often enter into a kind of trance in which words emerge from a place in myself that lies deeper than my conscious rational mind. I do not know that I know something until the words take shape on the page, and even then, their meaning unfolds over time. Something like this must have happened with the Nine Touchstones. I was drawn to the Native American teachings expressed in several of the touchstones even though I did not fully understand their context or meaning at the time. I was drawn to maternal values without knowing that they are the basis of ethics in egalitarian matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality by Carol P. Christ”

Four Worlds Poem by Sara Wright

They came from

Life giving Waters,

emerging from a Lake

at the Beginning of time.

Avanyu –

Serpent,

Spirit of the River

pecked into stone

or painted

on canyon walls

embodies their story.

 

The Tewa settled above

the Great River Banks.

Roaring water flowed

through tributaries

mountain gorges.

The People gave thanks.

  Water meant Life.

Each village was the center

of the Tewa’s First world.

 

Bound together by

Women who tended

holy household shrines,

prayed for rain,

created fires,

gathered seed,

ground food,

grew babies,

dug clay to shape

earthen pots.

This was the Second world

of the Tewa.

Continue reading “Four Worlds Poem by Sara Wright”

A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

Following up on my recent blogs on the roles of women in the Neolithic revolution and on “egalitarian matriarchy,” I have been re-reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s ground-breaking book, Women at the Center, about the survival of the “adat matriarchaat” (the principles of matriarchy) among the more than four million Minangkabau people of Indonesia.

According to Sanday, the customs of the matriarchaat (the Dutch word has been adopted by the Minangkabau people)—including matrilineal descent, matrilocal marriage, and ownership of the land by the mother clan—have survived accommodation with Islam. This is in no small part due to the fact that one of the principle values of the matriachaat is to conjugate (to come together) rather than to dominate. Rather than viewing Islam as an opposing force, the Minangkabau emphasize the aspects of Islam–such as love and compassion for the weak–that are compatible with their traditional worldview. Through this clever maneuver, the Minangkabau manage to practice Islam while maintaining their traditional egalitarian matriarchy. Continue reading “A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ”

Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ

When the word “matriarchy” is spoken, the first question that comes up is: what about men? Most people imagine that matriarchy must oppress men—just as patriarchy oppresses women. Sadly, concern about the oppression of women in patriarchy is less automatic.

In the classical dualisms (stemming from Plato) that structure much of western thought up to the present day, nature is associated with finitude and death, which are viewed as limitations. Men are said to be able to transcend finitude and death through their rational capacities, while women are said to be tied to the body and less capable of transcending it. This becomes a justification for the subordination and domination of women.

While western thought disparages nature, the egalitarian matriarchal Minangkabau people of western Sumatra, base their worldview on the principle of growth in nature. The Minangkabau say that they “take the good in nature” and “throw away the bad.” While they recognize chaos and violence within nature, they choose to focus on the good: the powers of birth and growth.

The Minangkabau believe that women who nurture growth in children and rice exemplify the good within nature. Continue reading “Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ”

How “Egalitarian Matriarchy” Works among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

Currently I am reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s a-mazing book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy for the third time. In it Sanday describes the living egalitarian matriarchal culture of four million people of the Minangkabau culture of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Sanday spent parts of two decades living among the Minangkabau before publishing her book. I can understand why it took her so long to come to terms with a culture so different from our own.

The Minangkabau are matrilineal, defining family relationships through the mother line. They are also matrilocal: extended families live in big houses traditionally crowned by symbolic buffalo horns reaching to the sky; husbands, affectionately called “roosters” come to live in the “chicken coop” of their wives. The big houses and surrounding farmlands are held in common by the maternal clan. This much is relatively easy to understand, once we are willing to accept that not all societies are patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal. Continue reading “How “Egalitarian Matriarchy” Works among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ”

Learning Gratitude for the Gifts of Life on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ

In Crete we are always being given gifts—fresh cherries, ice cold bottles of raki, yogurt swimming in honey, and so much more. Over the years it finally hit me that this spirit of great generosity is a living remnant of the ancient Cretan egalitarian matriarchal tradition of gift-giving.

In egalitarian matriarchal cultures gift-giving is not something reserved for birthdays and holidays. It is a way of life rooted in the primary understanding that life is a gift that is meant to be shared.

Our lives are a gift from our mothers. Our individual lives have are not something we create or created for ourselves. We all emerged from the body of a mother. We were all given the gift of care and feeding by a mother or others. Our mothers did not create themselves. They emerged from the bodies of mothers and were cared for and fed by mothers or others. And so on back to the original mother of the human race, known as the African Eve.

Continue reading “Learning Gratitude for the Gifts of Life on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ”