In this blog post I’d like to take you with me on a recent visit to the special exhibition “Arts and Prehistory”* in the Museum of Mankind (Musée de l’Homme) in Paris.** Like the Feminine Power in London exhibition I… Read More ›
Embodiment
From the Archives: New Year and Sustainable Resolution by Sara Frykenberg
This was originally posted on January 3, 2017 I am writing this blog on New Year’s Day, so Happy New Year! Today I say these words as both a statement of hope and as invocation. Happy New Year: may it… Read More ›
The Crone of Winter, by Molly Remer
Just for right now, let the swirling soften.Exhale into the day,wherever you are,whatever is happening.Allow a cloak of comfortto settle across your shouldersand enfold youwith peace and restoration.Draw up strength from the earthbeneath your feet.Settle one hand on your bellyand… Read More ›
Re-Anointing the Body by Eline Kieft
How ‘at one’ are you with your body, and what reasons might there be if your body-sense got separate(d) from your soul-sense? This piece starts with the difference between feminine and masculine spirituality, and introduces a few reasons why living… Read More ›
Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Can We Celebrate the Dark? Can We Sleep?
This was originally posted on December 19, 2019 According to Marija Gimbutas, the religion of Old Europe celebrated the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Agricultural peoples understand that seeds must be kept… Read More ›
Equinox amongst the Stones
A Modern Pilgrimage to the Isle of Lewis & Harris, Part 2 In the previous post of October 14th, I introduced my recent pilgrimage to meet the Goddess, honour the physical and psychological changes that have happened inside me recently. I described… Read More ›
Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Let Us Proclaim the God Who Bleeds Now
This was originally posted November 19, 2018 we need a god who bleeds now we need a god who bleeds nowa god whose wounds are notsome small male vengeancesome pitiful concession to humilitya desert swept with dryin marrow in honor… Read More ›
Taking it to the Cauldron, by Molly Remer
If I squint,I can almost see steam liftingfrom a cauldron in the forestand smell changedrifting through the air.I am looking at the shardsof the year,some new-broken,some re-collected,some shining with possibility,and I feel the call,the urge,the promise,to tip them all into… Read More ›
The Magic of the Ordinary, by Molly Remer
“Nothing is so simple, or so out of the ordinary for most of us, then attending to the present.” — Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection I often speak of being in the temple of the ordinary,… Read More ›
From the Archives: Women’s Bodies and the Bible by Janet Maika’i Rudolph
Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost… Read More ›
To Nurse at the Same Breasts: Muslim-Jewish Kinship in Literature and Life by Joyce Zonana
It is tempting to read these recurring images of milk twins in Arab-Jewish literature as no more than a symbol, albeit a powerful one, of the profoundly intimate “brother- (and sister-)hood” of Jews and Muslims in the pre-partition culture of the Middle East and North Africa.
But the image of “milk twins” is much more than a metaphor or a symbol: it represents a reality. For it seems that many Jewish and Muslim women, living side by side as they did, had in fact regularly nursed one another’s children.
Fireless Altars and Crone Encounters By Barbara Ardinger
We’ve just entered November, the beginning of winter, the season of darkness. Twenty-odd years ago, I led a group of students through the Wheel of the Year in a class I called Practicing the Presence of the Goddess. (I also… Read More ›
Last Tuesday Night by Marcia Mount Shoop
It’s been just over a week. Last Tuesday night to be exact. That’s the night the four of us huddled around our beloved companion of sixteen and a half years and said goodbye. Buck became a part of our family… Read More ›
Embodied Knowing, by Molly Remer
You are your ownsacred space. Your feet are alwayson temple ground. One of the key factors to me that differentiates feminist spiritual paths from many dominant religious traditions and frameworks is the recognition and acknowledgement of the body as a… Read More ›
Lily B and Messages From the Beyond by Sara Wright
The night before last I had a dream that has stayed with me. My dreams rise out of my body to teach and to comfort me so I pay close attention. I had recently written tributes for two men, Lynn… Read More ›
A Shared Bridge by Lou Hartmann and Diana
A fellow college classmate, Diana, and I wrote this poem together as we were inspired by the likes of Adrienne Rich and Sara Ahmed. We wanted to touch on the animosity between trans folk and cis women that often exists… Read More ›
Toadwise: A Tale for a Life Lover – Part I by Sara Wright
Last night I was thinking about the giant western toad that is living in my garden when I had a peculiar thought: Write a story about the Toad and an Old Woman and call it A Tale for a Life… Read More ›
Breathe with me by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
Breathe with me. I know. I know. I understand. Breathe with me anyway. It hurts. It’s scary. It’s horrible. It’s relentless. I know. Just breathe. Every time we breathe out, our bodies release things we do not want. So breathe… Read More ›
God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana
The first time I came across the phrase, I thought I must be making a mistake. “Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice,” the passage read in French, “May God’s womb enfold her.” or possibly, “May God enfold her in His womb.” His womb?
Uncovering What’s Hidden by Sara Wright
Shame is the shadow of being unloved, unwanted, rejected, strung out on need. Shame paralyzes; slamming into reverse actions that would create new intentions including hope of love. Shame blots out Personhood, snapping the thread of interdependency. Plant Consciousness restores… Read More ›
The Last Chemo by Carol P. Christ
When I went to the hospital for chemo on Thursday, the doctor told me it would be my last one. That was a surprise. I thought I would have at least one more. But it was a good surprise, because… Read More ›
Living with Cancer Treatment by Carol P. Christ
At the end of July 2020, I was diagnosed with stage 3 aggressive cancer. As of this week, I will have been receiving a very high dose of chemo (5 hours on the drip every 3 weeks) for 6 months,… Read More ›
Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ
I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have vowed to change one of my habits. I have always been house-proud and love using my artistic flair to decorate my home in beauty. I have had… Read More ›
Homebound by Joyce Zonana
When my parents left Egypt, they left behind everything they’d grown up with, all the objects that carried their deepest associations and memories. They taught me to scorn such “things”—what others value as mementos or souvenirs—rightly reasoning they can be lost in a moment. But while we have them, it is lovely, I’m learning, to let the spirits embedded within them, the memories and feelings they evoke, surround and comfort us. As I move through this house, I feel bound to my own and others’ histories, embedded in a rich and complex life that nurtures and sustains me. And as I sit still and knit, I sense that I am knitting (knotting) up the by now long, loose threads of my own life, shaping them into a coherent and satisfying whole.
Restoration by Molly Remer
In 2014, I sat on a low wooden bench nursing my 6 week old baby boy while wet plaster strips were laid across my face to create a mask. The final activity of the Rise Up and Call Her Name… Read More ›
Altars Everywhere, Part 2 by Carol P. Christ
This is a continuation of an earlier blog in which I discuss home altars as a way to bring beliefs about women’s spiritual power into the body and daily life. In my bedroom, images of the Snake Goddesses of Knossos… Read More ›
Altars Everywhere, Part 1 by Carol P. Christ
In a recent blog, Carolyn Boyd invited us to reflect on how our women’s spiritual power is activated through symbols that help us to remember and manifest the “deep well” of our inner knowing. According to historian of religion Mircea… Read More ›
Dancing for Forgiveness and Reconciliation – Part Two By Laura Shannon
In Part One of this article, I described dancing Jewish, Romani, and Armenian dances for forgiveness and reconciliation with groups in Germany and all over the world. I also offered danced rituals of remembrance at former concentration camps and other places… Read More ›
A Story to Inspire Hope by Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann
These days deep emotions seem to burst forth at unexpected moments. While in the car between visiting a pumpkin farm owned by friends and the local cider mill, I decided to pull out a crumpled paper with my brief presentation… Read More ›
October Magic, by Molly Remer
In was in October that my last grandmother died, my last living grandparent. As the leaves turn to red and gold once more, I wake thinking of her each morning. I wake thinking of my maternal grandmother too, who died… Read More ›