Category: Embodiment

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 it out. All of it. Let it go.
Deep breath. However you prefer—mouth, nose—just breathe.
What do you need to let go?

For me right now, there’s rage.
All the people refusing the masks, refusing the vaccine, even friends of mine who have watched me suffer with post-COVID syndrome for almost a year, still blaming me somehow for my illness.
Breathe. Let it out. Don’t have to carry it anymore.
There’s fear, too — friends, family, fighting COVID, or taking dangerous, unnecessary risks.
Long, slow breaths. Release. Into the loving matrix of Creation-Life-Love. I can’t hold this anymore. I release it.

There’s grief. Loss. Suffering. Isolation. Pain. Oh, breathe, let the tears flow, let the breaths and the tears just be what they are.
Stress. So much stress. We’re all frayed, so far beyond our limits. Breathe it out. Breathe it out again. Deep breaths – make noise if you want. Moan.
She cradles us in breath, the Divine Womb. She is the Source of our breath, and She is always cradling us, always breathing with us.
Breathe again. Close your eyes. Let your Holy Spirit bathe you in its healing power.
But it doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t DO anything!
I know. But it is enough. Just let it be. Be breath breathing itself.
What if you deserve to let go?
What if you deserve to be cradled in healing Love?
What if you deserve just to be?

Breathe. It sometimes feels so nice. Breath in, breath out.
Your body is letting go of anything you do not want.
You can release it now. Breathe it out. It’s ok.
Anywhere you want to feel your breath is ok. Wherever you want it to go, just breathe it there, and then release.
There’s no way to do this wrong. It’s your breath. It’s your breathing. A gift your body has, a magical, powerful, simple, holy gift. Breathe however feels good and right to you.
No rush. Take your time. As long as you want. As often as you want.
What if you deserve compassion?
What if you deserve to be bathed in healing Love?
What if you deserve to rest in your breath?
Breathe, darling. Close your eyes if you like. With every breath, you are holy.

In my Methodist tradition, which focuses heavily on the Holy Spirit, we sing a breathing hymn I love. Here is my rewritten version:

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
fill me with Life anew,
restore my soul with ev’ry breath,
to do what Love wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
so shall I rest, secure,
cradled in Love’s bright healing peace,
and held in compassion pure.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
till I am wholly thine,
till body, spirit, all of me,
glows with thy Fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
until my heart is free,
and I perceive my ev’ry breath
is thine Eternity.

—Edwin Hatch (1878), revised.

Our world is so frayed right now. We are all at the end of our rope. We feel the same way most new mothers feel in capitalist patriarchies, in which motherhood means financial strain (or poverty), isolation, anxiety, constant demands, an inability to meet basic physical and mental health needs, and no escape from continuous, relentless emotional and physical labor. Women are expected to embrace this level of self-sacrificial stress in motherhood, as part of our female slave role in capitalist patriarchy, which defines our unpaid, unvalued labor as a natural extension of our biological sex. The burden on women is higher than ever these days, with women and even girls taking the lion’s share of extra household duties so that boys and men can continue in their education and careers. Women are suffering 100% of job losses as well.

In times like these, I keep turning to my faith for comfort and strength. In my tradition, the Holy Spirit is the Divine Breath, the Source of Life, which animates all living things and all Creation as sacred. It comes originally from the Hebrew “ruach,” a feminine noun. So when I take time just to breathe, that is sacred time, allowing my true, divine self to feel its divinity (as Methodism’s founder John Wesley might say). I do not take breathing for granted. After my COVID experience, how could I ever take it for granted again? So, for me, breathing time is holy — “set apart” as a communion, a Eucharist of Grace: life-giving, healing, restorative, and liberative. Almost every night for the past eleven months, I have spent time lying in bed just breathing: feeling the breath of the trees behind me in the woods, allowing their wellness to enter me, breathing out to them whatever I want to let go. In breathing this way, I am able to understand bodily that my breath is Goddess. Goddess who is ever birthing Love and Liberation. The Divine Source of All, who is every justice, every healing, every restoration. My breath is fair economies and safe respected female bodies; it is just relationships and female thriving. This is my breath. This is the Source of the Healing that rebirths every death into Life. This is Goddess.

So, breathe with me, sisters. And brothers. She is here, and we are the ones who breathe her. What if we deserve to be bathed in Healing Love? She knows. She understands.

Just breathe.

 

Trelawney Grenfell-Muir teaches courses about Sex, Dating, Marriage, and Work in the Religion and Theological Studies Department at Merrimack College and about Cross Cultural Conflict in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A Senior Discussant at the Religion and the Practices of Peace Initiative at Harvard University, she holds an M.Div. from the Boston University School of Theology with a concentration in Religion and Conflict, and a Ph.D. in Conflict Studies and Religion with the University Professors Program at Boston University. She currently writes articles, book chapters, and liturgical resources about feminist, nature-based Christianity.

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?

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?

I’d just started translating Ce pays qui te ressemble [A Land Like You], Tobie Nathan’s remarkable novel of Egypt’s Jews in the first half of the twentieth-century, and I couldn’t be sure I was correct in thinking that “womb” was the proper rendering for “matrice.” But a quick search confirmed my hunch. Matrice (from the Latin matrix < mater) might be translated as “matrix” or “mould,” but that made no sense here. “Uterus or womb” was the anatomical meaning, and it was the first meaning listed in my French dictionary.

The phrase, or something very like it, kept turning up, always after a dead person was named:  

Que Dieu accueille son âme en sa matrice.

Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice.

Que Dieu la berce dans sa matrice. 

May God’s womb welcome his soul.

May God’s womb enfold him.

May God’s womb cradle her.

In all, “God’s womb” is mentioned seven times in this novel set in Cairo’s ancient Jewish quarter, Haret al-Yahud. Each time, it’s part of a ritual prayer, a formulaic wish for the wellbeing of a departed soul. But what extraordinary wellbeing is wished for here, what a remarkable envisioning of God as the possessor of a welcoming, warm womb. Continue reading “God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana”

Uncovering What’s Hidden by Sara Wright

Picture of a group of cranes flying in the dusk sky

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 it to life.

Continue reading “Uncovering What’s Hidden by Sara Wright”

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 I had felt more tired than usual after my most recent treatment. Apparently, I had started to feel a bit better when my cancer became inactive, but chemo is cumulative, and it caught up with me.

I slept well on Thursday night. On Friday morning I felt great relief and joy thinking that my chemo was ending. I called a number of friends to tell them the good news. I suspected that I might feel very tired for a few weeks from the last dose of chemo. But after that, all of the symptoms caused by the chemo would begin to lessen—including numbness in my right foot, instability, lack of energy, shortness of breath, anemia, and hair loss.

By the mid-afternoon the tiredness set in again. This time I did not get the few good days that I have attributed to a prescribed dose of cortisone to counter the effects of the chemo. Even though I predicted that the last chemo would make me very tired, there is a part of me that wants this all to be over—and now! 

But in truth it will not be. Not for months. Continue reading “The Last Chemo by Carol P. Christ”

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, with 2 treatments to go. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was in a state of shock. As I was about to leave the oncologist’s office, I said to the doctor, “stage 3 is pretty bad, isn’t it?” He responded, “Well, it could have been stage 4.”

As I understand it, the prognosis for becoming cancer free for stages 1 and 2 is good, for stage 4 it is unlikely, while for stage 3, the chances are something like 50-50. Although my primary oncologist declines to make predictions, I was told by a junior doctor that with the type of cancer I have, my chances were about 40% that the surgery that would follow chemo would remove all of the cancer.

Despite the fact that my chances were less than 50-50, for the most part I remained optimistic that I would be one of the lucky ones. I have not suffered depression, nor have I been overcome with anxiety. Although my primary doctor and the others I have seen are not interested in discussing the effects of prayer, meditation, and visualization, to a one they have said that “attitude” makes a big difference.

I attribute my ability to remain optimistic to several factors. I am not afraid of death. Continue reading “Living with Cancer Treatment by Carol P. Christ”

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 a cleaning lady most of the time for many years, so my homes have been relatively clean. The living room and dining room have always been ready to receive guests. But I didn’t always do the dishes or clean the surfaces in the kitchen right away, clothes I had worn often sat on chairs before I hung them up, and I didn’t make the bed every day.

Now that I think about it, this habit goes back to my childhood and teen-age years, when my not picking up things in my bedroom was a bone of contention between me and my mother. Joyce Zonana wrote recently about how she rejected her mother’s role as homemaker and “dutiful” wife when she was young. Only now during the Covid crisis, she writes, is she beginning to enjoy the traditional women’s work of cooking regularly and knitting.

When I was a teen-ager, I sewed all of my clothes (both because we didn’t have a lot of money and because, as I was very tall and very skinny, most ready-made clothes didn’t fit). I was a second mother to my baby brother. For me, those were the fun parts of women’s work. But I hated washing dishes and cleaning the house, and I did not learn how to cook. I suppose I recoiled from the repetitiveness of those tasks. I was also aware that my father ruled the roost, and though I would never have criticized him, I knew that one of my mother’s jobs was to please him. Laura Montoya’s meditation on her grandmother’s life in a recent blog reminds us that the failure of homemakers to meet their husbands needs or wants can lead to violence.

When I went away to college, I learned to disparage all of women’s work, including the parts of it I had loved. I was taught that the “life of the mind” was the highest pursuit and that the “life of the body” was secondary. I now see this aspect of university culture as brainwashing of the highest order. Continue reading “Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ”

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.

Joyce ZonanaWhen I was growing up, home was the last place I wanted to be. It’s not that ours was an abusive or angry household: both parents loved me and my mother labored to create a calm, clean space to contain us all. It’s just that I felt suffocated.

Part of the problem was that we were immigrants. My parents were struggling to find their way in an alien culture, and, with little else to hold onto, they clung to their customs and traditions. I wanted to be “American,” to mingle with classmates, to venture into the vastness (New York City!) just beyond our door. The Middle Eastern culture from which we hailed had strict rules for women and girls, and my mother expected me to follow them. She herself was an excellent cook, a creative seamstress and scrupulous housekeeper, a devoted and dutiful wife. I rejected all of it, refusing to cook, ripping out seams, balking at my weekly chores of dusting and vacuuming and ironing. Instead I dreamt of life as a writer, a renegade, an outlaw. My role models were hobos and witches and gypsies; more than anything, I yearned to be free, longing to “walk at all risks,” like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh.

Continue reading “Homebound by Joyce Zonana”

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 program, a women’s spirituality curriculum by Elizabeth Fisher that I’d been guiding over the course of an entire year, I had shown all of the women in my living room how to make masks and now it was my turn to have the mask material applied. My back was sore and I felt tired and lonely within my plaster shell. As my face faded from view, the women began to talk around me as if I suddenly wasn’t there and as my lips were covered, I became voiceless and closed in, shrouded and silent. When the plaster dried and I emerged again, I saw a dear friend sitting in the recliner drinking tea. While I was not sorry to have finished my commitment to the group and to have closed out the year-long program, I was suddenly awash with a deep longing for rest, a deep longing to be the one in the chair being brought tea, instead of the one to lead the group, baby dangling from her breast, tugged in a million directions by questions and needs.

This moment, this snapshot of maternal priestessing, has recurred for me many times over the last few years, a wondering of why I could not permit myself to be the tea-drinker instead of the hostess, the person to enjoy instead of the person to teach, the person to rest instead of the person to create experiences. Continue reading “Restoration by Molly Remer”

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 sit on a cabinet painted by a Greek woman with images of birds and flowers. Between them is a crystal ball, while before them are three shells, the smaller of which was given to me by a Maori woman from New Zealand. Above them is an image of the sea in Molivos, Lesbos, painted by my friend Judith Shaw in the year we were both living in the village.

Continue reading “Altars Everywhere, Part 2 by Carol P. Christ”

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 Eliade, the sacred and the profane were not separated in premodern cultures because all of life was considered to be sacred. Many in the Women’s Spirituality and Goddess communities have advocated this earlier more wholistic understanding. Although it is not always easy to overcome the dualism between sacred and profane, we attempt to do so.

One of the symptoms of my chemotherapy is neurasthenia or partial numbness in my right foot. When it first occurred, I fell three times in my apartment because I was not lifting my foot automatically. I became afraid to move without holding onto the walls or furniture. I resisted my friends’ advice to get a walker, but finally agreed that I needed some form of physical support. I arranged for my friend Eirini Kouraki to have a rubber tip added to the shepherd’s cane I sometimes use walking in the mountains. When she brought it too me, I decorated it with three ribbons I saved from rituals at the Holy Myrtle Tree at the Paliani monastery in Crete. The most recent were brown, the color of the earth, and red, the strong energy I will need to heal. I added a light green-blue ribbon, representing the calm and clear optimism I feel as I face a crisis of life and death. The ribbons remind me of the healing power of the Holy Tree that I have called upon many times, turning a symbol of my infirmity into a symbol of healing and hope.

In the past weeks as my cancer treatment continues, I have been feeling strong enough to finish unpacking (with the help of Vera, my cleaning lady) and organizing my new home in Crete. As I rediscover sacred objects, I create altars. Altars are physical reminders of our spiritual beliefs. Creating and tending them helps to create the embodied knowing that brings the spirit into our daily lives.

The living area of my new apartment has 3 glass shelving units. In one of them, I created a triple altar with images of the Goddess and female power from ancient Crete. Because the apartment is sleek and modern yet welcoming to my antique furniture, I kept the altar minimal.

On the top shelf I placed three pre-palatial “pitcher” Goddesses, two with breasts from which liquid pours and one that is holding a water jug from which liquid can also be poured. These images, dated before 2000 BCE, express the Old European insight that the Goddess represents the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Though they have human qualities, they are more than human. The Goddess from Malia who sits in the center of this altar has a beaked face and wings and her triangular shape evokes the mountains from which water flows to villages and fields. These images remind me that the Goddess is the Source of Life, provider of gift of life that is our embodied being and the gifts of life—including food and water–that nourish us daily.

The second shelf holds one of the oldest images from ancient Crete, the Neolithic Goddess from Ierapetra. She is seated on massive buttocks, securely rooted in the earth. Her face is beaked, symbolizing her connection to the birds that fly in the air. Her body is decorated with lines identified by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas as the flowing water that nourishes all of life. Her body too is shaped like the mountain. She represents the never-ending powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of nature.

In front of the Neolithic Goddess I placed a twig from Paliani with a dark blue ribbon reminding me that my friend Tina Nevans is sending the healing energy of the Blue Buddha to me in her daily meditations, as well as several handsewn triangles holding leaves from the Holy Myrtle tree, and a crystal extracted from the Trapeza Cave, found on the path outside of it. To Her right is a small image of the long-necked turtle Goddess from Myrtos who holds a pitcher recalling women’s daily visits to water sources, and a small copy of a Kamares ware pitcher used to pour libations in the Sacred Centers. To the left are a bronze copy of a labrys, originally the double sacred female triangle transformed into wings and also a happy little bull who reminds us that animals experience the joy of life.

On the lower shelf, copies of dancing women from post-Minoan Paliakastro symbolize the transmission of Old European values of community, lack of hierarchy, and most of all, celebration of the joy of life as Laura Shannon has written. The dancing women are surrounded by images of later Mycenaean Goddesses and of Aphrodite who was worshiped at the Minoan site of Kato Symi in classical times, and a small reproduction of the Neolithic Goddess from Catal Huyuk, who reminds us that Crete was settled c.7000 BCE by farmers from Anatolia.

In the hallway I placed a copy of a drawing of the Holy Myrtle Tree of the monastery of Paliani created by one of the nuns. According to the story told, the area where the monastery was later built was burned in a fire but a small myrtle bush survived. It was watered by girls who saw the image of the Panagia (Mary the Mother of Jesus) in its charred branches. So, the monastery which was known as ancient in 668 CE was built. The monastery is a sacred place for the surrounding villages. The sacred tree and the icon of the Panagia in the church are said to have performed many miracles. Below the drawing of the Sacred Myrle Tree is a small image of a face in a twig from tree given to me by German artist Carla Randel.

On a small table under the drawing, I placed an image of Aphrodite who was earlier associated with myrtle trees, along with a candle, a star, a blue glass paperweight, and a triton shell, symbolizing Aphrodite as the morning and evening star, and her relation to the sea.

When I light candles in translucent glass holders on the altar with the pitcher Goddesses as the day dawns and in the evening as day turns to night, and when I gaze at my other altars, I remember that I am always surrounded by the nurturing love of the Goddess. This love takes root in my body, and I am inspired to share it with others.

To be continued.