Family – Page 18 – Feminism and Religion

My Immortal Mother-in-Law by Elizabeth Cunningham

Elizabeth Cunningham headshot jpeg Before Olga Eunice Quintero Smyth died on December 4, 2014 at age 101 and 10 months, I was tempted to believe she was immortal, literally. I knew Olga for forty-five years (from age 16 to 61). For thirty-five of those years she was my mother-in-law. Our history began when I was kicked out of high school and went to work at her free-wheeling school, her utter lack of any interest in reforming me a blast of fresh air. It ended with me sitting beside her as she was dying, softly singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Olga was named for a Russian princess her mother encountered when she was a babe in her arms en route to Trinidad from her native Venezuela. Olga took for granted her descent from Incan royalty as well. Her mother moved the family to New York when she was eleven. A few years later, she won a scholarship to Mount Holyoke College. She married a classmate’s brother, Julian Smyth, great grandson to Nathaniel Hawthorne. If that weren’t enough, Olga claimed for Julian’s line direct descent from the first century Celtic Queen Boadicea. As long as she could speak, she spun tales. “Where in Africa was she born?” one of her nurses asked me. “What kind of a dancer was she?” Continue reading “My Immortal Mother-in-Law by Elizabeth Cunningham”

Stories for (Re)creation in the New Year by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Two New Years’ Eves ago, I came to the realization that I did not need to watch the television countdown to ring in midnight and begin the New Year. I had always watched the show with my family as a child, and even while it made me feel curiously bad, I still somehow felt like it was an obligatory component of the day, right up there with kisses, well wishes, blowers, horns, and sparkling wine. Since we seldom went to an actual New Year’s party, it was a way of connecting with the world. I gave it up, though, when I ultimately deemed the musical guests and hosts to be unviewable.

I was not looking to make a new tradition per se that year when I decided to light a hunk of myrrh in the fireplace. The myrrh had come to me as a gift in a Three Kings Christmas set. It made a pretty decent blaze because I had placed it atop a bed of shallow candle wax from an old votive candle. Let me say, while it smelled lovely and burned a long time, I do not recommend doing this – the fire became alarmingly vigorous for a little while. Anyway, I spread a cloth on the floor and set out some food, calling my family together to sit in a circle by the hearth. We dimmed the lights, and by fire I read the Epic of Gilgamesh (with some tasteful PG 13 edits) from 11:00 pm until 1:00 am. I had been reading great epics to the kids, and it seemed somehow appropriate to return to Babylon that year. We did not mark the New Year at a precise moment but rather sailed into it on the tides of an ancient tale. It was a revelation to us all, mostly because we were reclaiming that night from the media usurpers who had defined it for us for most of our lives.

This year, we intended to do something similar until we ended up throwing an impromptu party for some friends and their children. I knew they would all have limited interest in my second annual fire reading, so we just fed them and eventually counted down the final moments of 2014 on my watch. But, after they left, we returned to the myth, this time reading the Babylonian Epic of Creation. We hit the mark, as the story itself was ritually performed at each New Year. It carried us deep into the first day of 2015 and was also a great revelation. Continue reading “Stories for (Re)creation in the New Year by Natalie Weaver”

Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly

December 2014 022 When the wheel of the year turns towards fall, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for fall 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 holiday season 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.

Late autumn and the 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 “Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly”

Stop. Drop. And Pray. by Valentina Khan

The other night, it was close to 11:00 pm and I was finally enjoying my own little ‘midnight’ snack and a healthy dose of reality TV when I got a phone call from a cousin I haven’t heard from in quite some time. He is in the East Coast and it seemed too late for a leisure phone call from him. So I answered in a panic, yet, all he wanted was to say “hi” and to talk a little bit about the obligation of a Muslim to pray the five daily prayers. OK, this is odd, I thought, but I guess I could entertain this topic for a few minutes. Might be better for me than the junk TV I was winding down to anyway.

We chatted for a few minutes and he started to get very heated about the requirement of the five daily prayers. To back up a little, let me paint a quick picture of this eccentric cousin of mine. He is smart. A New Yorker. Middle-aged. He has studied at prestigious universities, has traveled the world, and even delved into religion so much so that he used to give sermons on Fridays, the holy day of the week for congregational prayer in the Muslim tradition. His main question for me, “Do you really believe in the flying white horse story?” Continue reading “Stop. Drop. And Pray. by Valentina Khan”

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Commitment to Life by Elise M. Edwards

A few weeks ago, I came across a postcard that I was given at a conference last year. I got the postcard (advertisement?) because it has a picture of Fannie Lou Hamer on it, and in my home and office, I like to display images and quotes from inspirational women, especially black women. Hamer was a sharecropper from rural Mississippi who became a leader within the civil rights movement in the United States. I was happy to have something with her likeness on it. It was only later that I looked at the text on the front and back of the card, which read in part, ”Often called the ‘spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” Hamer worked tirelessly on behalf of the rights of others—including the unborn. [She said,] ‘The methods used to take human lives such as abortion, the pill, the ring, etc. amounts to genocide. I believe that abortion is legal murder.’” I realized then that the card was distributed by an organization called Consistent Life, who, in support of a “consistent ethic of life,” is “committed to the protection of life threatened by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia.”

I was conflicted about the use of Hamer’s image for this organization’s purposes. It is true, Hamer did have those views about abortion and birth control. But I did not know if her image and story was being manipulated for a particular political and religious agenda—one I do not align myself with. I put the card in a box of other images and quotes. I didn’t display it, but I didn’t throw it away, either, which is why I came across it again a couple weeks ago as I was cleaning and decorating my home office. I had the same misgivings about the image as before, and I set it aside again. Continue reading “Fannie Lou Hamer’s Commitment to Life by Elise M. Edwards”

Mother Blessings and the Power of Ritual by Molly

You are the
most powerful
intelligent
inspirational

Woman

Close to my heart.

You continue to
become
exponentially more amazing.

Always giving
others the step UP.

Force of the cosmos
connecting the Web

You are.

Thank you.

–Phanie

Last week, my friend sat on the floor during my mother blessing ceremony and wrote the above poem for me. When she gave it to me she said, “I’m not like you, I don’t write things and share them on the internet.” It was very powerful to receive the gift of written word from someone who does not often write, but who knows how deeply writing speaks to me. Continue reading “Mother Blessings and the Power of Ritual by Molly”

We Are Music by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited When I was about eight years old, I dreamed one night that I stood inside the workings of an immense instrument, so big it filled the sky. It was crafted of wood and gold, and although there was no obvious source of light, it was brightly illuminated. I could have confused it for the inner workings of a clock except that I could hear the sweet music it produced resonating throughout its cavernous hollows. It was curious to me that there seemed to be no atmosphere there either to breathe or to carry sound. Within it, I did not perceive any movement. And, there was no actual melody that it produced, which could be sung or repeated. There was only an enveloping harmonic thrumming. The sound was multiplicative and voluminous although not piercing. I understood it in the dream to be cosmic, structural, primordial, and generative. When I awoke, I had the feeling that I had seen something divine. It was not heaven. It was not God. It was more like the instrument of the universe, or the universal instrument, created as a first work among creation

It was puzzling to me that I had such a dream because I was not then a musician. I felt that I understood its meaning, but I was surprised by its discontinuity with things in my normal frame of reference. My mother played piano, but she had no music theory in her background. She surely did not have any training in musical cosmologies, such as those produced in antiquity by the philosophers and theologians. I occasionally mentioned the dream over the years when context seemed to warrant it, but, more or less, I filed it away. Continue reading “We Are Music by Natalie Weaver”

A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver

Natalie edited Last Tuesday marked my fourth day home in over two months. I was researching over the summer in Europe. When I was not working, I was climbing up castle ruins or carrying groceries or creatively managing my children’s laundry with very modest facilities at my disposal. Unlike all of my other summer colleagues, I had elected to bring my children with me, so my summer was work intensive in both the professional and parental capacities.

Arriving home from our journey late in the evening Friday, we went straight to bed. But, the following day, I began again the task of laundering and grocery-ing, now made more mundane by the absence of castles to climb. It was a good thing that the jet lag woke me around 4am. For, I needed to buy juice boxes, sandwich bags, cookie treats, fruit, and so on for lunch the following week. I ran out in between loads, remembering also that we still needed to eat over the weekend. I bought Stouffers. Then, still between loads, I began the tedious task of labeling individual crayons, markers, glue sticks, safety scissors, tape roles, pencil packs, and the like. Somewhere in all that, I read an addendum to the supply list that said the kids needed headphones for their computer work. So, I threw another load in the washer and ran back to the store. About 5 pm, I began to feel really tired, but that is also when I discovered that the uniform pants I had purchased didn’t fit. I began scouring last year’s batch for a temporary fix. Then, I labeled the gym shirts, got the lasagna out of the oven, fed everyone, cleaned up, and readied the lot for bed. That was a Saturday. Continue reading “A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver”

Family Ties by amina wadud

Some of you may be familiar with the time honored curse: “May you grow up to have a child exactly like you…”? I know, no one is exactly alike, but the point is, some of what we put our parents through will likely be revisited upon us if/when we become parents. And so it is, I have joked with my children time and again, “I wonder where you got THAT from?”

Of my five children the one most like me is my middle daughter. Of course from my perspective her version is multiplied exponentially. Take her vegetarian beginnings. When she was 10 years and 10 months old she made the pronouncement that she would no longer eat slaughtered animals. As she was too young to have any kitchen responsibilities besides a weekly dish-washing assignment along with her siblings, I begged her father to intervene on my behalf. He managed to get her to agree to wait until she was older. 2 months later, she had a birthday. Now she was older. She has been a vegetarian ever since! Continue reading “Family Ties by amina wadud”

No Ramadan Gloom and Doom by amina wadud

The first blog I read about Ramadan this year was full of the usual self-righteous pontification that takes this occasion to remind people to do such and such at this or that level. Who is the target audience for such an approach, I wondered? It seemed to operate on the basic idea that Muslims will NOT do the right thing unless someone tells them to. Mostly, though I noticed the gloom and doom of it and I decided then to make my Ramadan focus on joy.

First a quick reminder about the basics: Throughout the 9^th lunar month, Muslims are obliged to abstain from food, drink and sexual intercourse during the day. It goes on like this for 29-30 days. There are also points of difference about some details of the fast, like how we determine which day to start. Either we actually cite the new moon, go by advanced calculations of the new moon, or some combination of these two. This leads to healthy chaos at the beginning because no one knows when the first day will, be but must prepare in order to get in that pre-dawn meal, called suhur. I say, healthy chaos, not only because I’m a bit of an anarchist, but also because I like that no one has complete control about such an important decision. Continue reading “No Ramadan Gloom and Doom by amina wadud”