Feminism and Religion – Page 44 – Feminism and Religion

My Body, My Self by Carol P. Christ

The other night I was invited out by a new friend to meet a group of his friends. It was a lovely gathering, and I felt welcomed. As we hugged good night outside the restaurant, one of the women commented, “Wow you really are tall.” Without missing a beat, I responded, “Yes it has been the bane of my life.” As the words tumbled out of my mouth I was aware that I spoke them dispassionately, not as is usual with a catch in my throat.

Don’t get me wrong about this. I don’t go around hating myself or my body. I know I am striking. I know I stand out in a crowd. I believe I am beautiful even as I age. Still, it is difficult to be singled out as different—especially when you are just going about your business. Moreover, comments about a woman’s height are never neutral: women who are taller than men challenge gender norms by our sheer physical being. Part of what is being said is almost always: you shouldn’t be so tall.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same. Continue reading “My Body, My Self by Carol P. Christ”

Where the Dance Is . . . On Cultivating a Daily Practice by Joyce Zonana

Although Goddess traditions invite us to embrace a world of immanence and change, rather than to seek to escape into transcendence—which some yoga teachings seem to point toward—I have come to believe that the “still point,” is, as Eliot writes, where “the dance is.” In other words, daily practice might grant us the capacity to always move through the world with grace and joy. The mind will be steady as it encounters and embraces the turning world. We will be whole.

jz-headshot When I was growing up, I was fascinated to see my father each day recite the morning blessings mandated for Jewish men. While the rest of the household bustled sleepily—my mother in the kitchen, my brother and I taking turns in the bathroom, my grandmother slowly getting dressed—my father, still in his pajamas, would stand in the center of our small living room, yarmulke on his head, tefillin wrapped around his arm and forehead, tallit draped over his shoulders. Using a tattered old siddur he had brought with him from Cairo, he would face the east and begin the ancient Hebrew prayers: “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe . . .”

I never knew then the content of what my father intoned, but I knew how committed he was to his practice: he prayed every morning without fail, from the day of his bar mitvah at the age of eleven (the rabbi in Cairo had decided to initiate him early because he had lost his father as a young child) until he a few years before his death at 84, when he became debilitated by Parkinson’s Disease. Ours was not a traditionally Orthodox Jewish family—we did not observe the Sabbath or keep kosher—but my father’s faithful performance grounded him and all the rest of us, bringing us us to what T.S. Eliot called “the still point of the turning world.”

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Stopping to Smell the Flowers by Marie Cartier

There is a saying, “Take time to smell the flowers.” Attributed to many different sources, it means among other things– take time and be grateful. Take time and relax. Take time.

In that spirit I am sending along pictures from the amazing “super bloom” California is experiencing this spring. It is the most magnificent we have ever had, I think. It happens once a decade, but we are lucky to have had a super bloom in 2017 and now this year as well. California had an extreme drought last year and then extreme rain this past winter. And now we have flowers…and flowers. Poppies are the state flower of California and they are being celebrated—all over. And people dropping in by helicopter and influencers ruining some of the poppy beds by laying in them for Instagram pics. Yes, it’s been crazy. But, when we were there (my wife and I) on a past Sunday, it felt so magical that so much of Los Angeles it seemed was out to smell the flowers. You can see a picture of folks lined up (my wife at the end in the picture below) photographing the flowers. Flowers suddenly are the new super star!

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Slippery Package: A prayer poem by Isabella Ides

She speaks a various language.

Bound in the bardo bereft

vaguely present, almost dead.

For fucking shining aloud

let me

back in. Come again, sweet terror

Carve my shadow on your cave walls

Render me a soul, source me

mystify, crush, obscure me

in that deep gorge

confine, stretch, reveal me

Let me wobble

stand.

Continue reading “Slippery Package: A prayer poem by Isabella Ides”

Befriending our Dragons by Sara Wright

“We are an overflowing river.
We are a hurricane.
We are an earthquake.
We are a volcano, a tsunami, a forest fire…”

These words written by Judith Shaw speak to the underlying merging of woman’s anger with Earth’s natural disasters, suggesting to me that women use “natural” violence in order to create change.

Violence, not the values of compassion and cooperation.

Violence and power over are the primary tools that Patriarchy uses to control women and the Earth.

Engaging in more violence will not solve the problems we face.

So many women including me are struggling like never before to survive on the edge of a culture that continues to sanction the vicious ongoing rape of both women and the Earth.

I use the death of trees as a primary example of the latter. By logging trees by the billions or killing them in “controlled burns” we are literally destroying human and non – human species. Without trees/plants we lose the oxygen we need to breathe.

We need “woman – centered” women to say NO!!! WE WON’T TOLERATE LIVING IN A DEATH DESTROYING CULTURE PREDICATED ON RAPE OF WOMEN AND THE EARTH.

We need women who are willing support other women – Women who refuse to remain neutral – Women who don’t wait until their mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters are assaulted to take a stand with other women – Women who refuse to stand behind their men when those men continue to support individuals (males or male identified women – the latter are often “Father’s Daughters” in Jungian parlance) – Women who refuse to support a Patriarchal system that is destroying us all.

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Kassiani’s Song: Woman at the Center of the Easter Drama by Carol P. Christ

Today I am reposting the song and story of Kassiani, the Byzantine composer, poet, and hymnographer, who is not well-known to western feminists or in western history in general. In Christian Orthodox tradition, Kassiani’s most famous song will be sung this week on Easter Tuesday night or very early Easter Wednesday morning, placing a woman’s love for Jesus at the heart of the Easter drama.

For many this song is the high point of Easter week.

Kassiani, also known as St. Kassia, was a Greek woman born into a wealthy family in Constantinople (now Istanbul) about 805 to 810 AD. According to three historians of the time, she was intelligent and beautiful and selected as a potential bride for the Emperor Theophilos. The chroniclers state that the Theophilos approached her and said: “Through woman, the worst,” referring to the sin of Eve. Clever Kassiani responded, “Through woman, the best,” referring to the birth of the Savior through Mary.

Apparently unable to accept being put in his place by a woman, Theophilos chose another bride. Perhaps relieved, Kassiani founded a monastery in Constantinople becoming its first abbess. She was an outspoken theological advocate of icons during the iconoclastic crisis (for which she was flogged). One of only two women to publish under her own name during the Byzantine Middle Ages, Kassiani wrote both poetry and hymns. Up to 50 of her hymns are known today, with 23 of them being part of the Greek Orthodox liturgy. Continue reading “Kassiani’s Song: Woman at the Center of the Easter Drama by Carol P. Christ”

Resurrections by Elizabeth Cunningham

As a minister’s daughter, I grew up almost literally in the church, its red door and ivied walls across the driveway from the rectory. On Easter the church was packed; every family received a pink or red geranium. There were Easter egg hunts, baskets stocked with chocolate rabbits and the jelly beans these magical creatures laid. The church rang with triumphant hymns: Jesus Christ is risen today. Although like all children I reveled in holidays involving excessive sweets, it was not the candy or the or the requisite rejoicing that moved me most.

It was the women, or in the Gospel according to John, the woman, bereft and brave, who went to the tomb to tend Jesus’s body. The male disciples had scattered and gone into hiding. In the Protestant Episcopal Church, Christmas Eve and Easter were the only times women played a prominent role in the story. Those were not the loud, triumphant moments. They lived in my child’s imagination as the quiet, mysterious times, Mary giving birth in the night attended by cows, donkeys, and stars. Dawn in a garden, wet with dew, the only sound birds waking and singing, the only people, the women, or the one woman who captured my imagination and, in my story, has her own apotheosis on that morning.

I did not question the miracle of resurrection. Miracles and magic made sense to me as a child. Theology didn’t. My father liked to expound on Jesus’s utterance from the cross “My God, my God why hast though forsaken me.” He insisted that Jesus was not crying out in despair but quoting Psalm 22, which ends in triumph. The Gospel narratives emphasize Jesus’s rising again “in accordance with the scriptures,” implying that he knew he would come back to life on the third day.

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The Lady Be With You – A Closer Look at Liturgical Idolatry by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Even though I realized at least 17 years ago that it makes no theological sense to limit our symbols of the Divine to male symbols – Lord, God, Father – it took several years for this idea to embed itself into my subconscious. Over time, male language moved from ‘unnoticed’ to ‘noticed’ to ‘distracting’ to, eventually, ‘oppressively violent when used exclusively, without female images to balance out millennia of the idolatry of maleness.’

One of my favorite ways to dislodge this subconscious, internalized patriarchy has involved rewriting favorite old hymns. I usually try to incorporate a combination of images, to represent the incarnate divinity of all genders and all Creation. But let’s be honest: female terms for the Divine remain startling in many religious and secular, cultural contexts. In my own Methodist tradition, even though progressive Methodists sign up on paper to the idea that “God” (there we go again with the male terms) is bigger than any symbol or gender, I’ve as yet only ever been to one Christian church that used balanced gender images of the Divine, and that was a queer welcoming Methodist ministry with intentionally inclusive theology and liturgy.

I think that church saved my life. Some days, I also think it ruined my life. It showed us all what Methodism can be; and then, its time ended, and we alums drifted into the diaspora to try to take the hope and healing we experienced there into our own journeys. Some of us remain within Methodism and continue to work for the vision of welcome, of the kin-dom, that we sought together there. Personally, I love being Methodist. Grace, the journey, grace, the quadrilateral, grace.

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Hekate, Goddess of Liminality and Intermediary by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie

Let me share with you the Goddess most honored as the Goddess of liminal time and space. It is our beloved Hekate, Great Goddess of the Three Ways, bridging Earth, Sea and Sky as we travel between worlds.

In modern times, She is seen by many as a “hag” or old witch stirring the cauldron. This idea was popularized by Roberts Graves’ book, The White Goddess. In early writings, however, she is portrayed as a beautiful and powerful maiden goddess.

“I come, a virgin of varied forms, wandering through the heavens, bull-faced, three-headed, ruthless, with golden arrows; chaste Phoebe bringing light to mortals, Eileithyia; bearing the three synthemata [sacred signs] of a triple nature. In the Aether I appear in fiery forms and in the air, I sit in a silver chariot.” (Chaldean Oracles)

She was the only one of the ancient Titans that Zeus allowed to retain her power after the Olympians seized control. She shared with Zeus, the awesome power of granting all wishes to humanity (or withholding, if she chose).

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Marianne Williamson. . . I’m Sacredly Smitten by Elisabeth Schilling

I caution myself to be critical and nuanced. I’m sorry, folks. I just haven’t had such dazzling hope or remote interest in politics since. . . well, since I was a puppet junior high evangelist for an independent candidate my Dad liked, and I don’t want to try to remember who it was. But I was 13. And I’m 38 now. What hath made this cold, indifferent, anxious millennial’s soul to warm?

I am into mindfulness, contemplative studies, Eckhart Tolle, Don Miguel Ruiz, Nhat Thich Hanh, the kind of comparative religious studies scholar who has eastern spirituality leanings, so when I heard Marianne Williamson was a presidential candidate, I got curious. I’ve not read A Course in Miracles (although I think I’ve avoided it for the same assumptions Williamson says she initially made) or actually any of her books. Williamson is Jewish and has a pluralistic perspective when it comes to noting the basic underlying wisdom of all religious and spiritual beliefs (I realize we have discussed this before when I called them “wisdom traditions” – is any tradition actually wise/can you separate the violence, oppressions, and misogynies of them?).

She speaks in cool, rushing waters and has a platform that still sounds “political”/political (she breaks down what this word actually means in her latest CNN Town Hall) and is spiritual and based in a rhetoric of love. After the complete loss of hope in what [T . .] represents, and the not-yet healed wounds from [B. . .], she sounds like a reasonable adult, much like Obama did during his years. I wonder if they are friends? They should be.

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