Feminism and Spirituality – Feminism and Religion

Winter Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Yes, it is December
already and again.
Let yourself notice the milkweed pods,
how they have split their sides
and are sending silky white seed fluffs
into the waiting air.
Witness the trees,
bare and gray and patient.
Watch the squirrels,
tails puffed against the chill,
stored nuts in their cheeks.
Listen to the wind
how it whispers and rattles
through the empty branches.
Watch the clouds,
slow-moving white billows
in a pale blue sky.
Be patient with yourself.
Grant yourself grace.
Remember the three invitations
of the solstice season:
to listen,
to wonder,
to be content.
Remember your promise
to keep company with joy.
Remember your vow
to be in devotion
to your own life.
Think about everything
there is to do.
Open your hands.
Feel that thin, whispering
winter wind
skim over your palms.
Take a deep breath.
Allow yourself to marvel
at all this year
has held.
Bless it.
Thank it.
Cup your hands
around your own face.
Say: thank you.
Here you are in the center
of your own life’s unfolding.
There is nowhere else to be.
Be gentle with yourself.
Invite the winter crone to tea.
Look into her eyes.
See yourself reflected there,
your own winter eyes open
to the possibility
of both clarity and delight.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. In the summer, I compiled a post with 13 summer lessons from 13 years of posts here at FAR. I decided to bookend that post with a Winter Lessons post as well. Here are thirteen lessons to share from past winter posts:

How Women Construct And Are Formed By Spirit: She Who Is Everywhere In Women’s Voices, part 2 By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

part 1 was posted yesterday

How God is Constructed

During my doctoral research, I worked in the field with a Lemba co-
Researcher who remains a good friend, Dr. L. Rudo Mathivha of Johannesburg and the Northern Province. When we sat with the women in the village of Hamangilasi, we asked Hanna Motenda, one of the interpreters and a retired schoolteacher, about the women’s concept of God. Throughout the interviews, the women’s conversations both in this village and elsewhere reflected God imaged as male.
I also asked whether the women imagine God as an external force, living in Nature or in Heaven, or as something living within themselves.

Hanna Motenda: Ourselves. God is in us. They say God is everywhere.
Even in Nature, when we look at anything, we see God. Quoting others, she
added, “God is like the wind, He’s everywhere and wherever I am, He’s
there.”

Feminism – the small and the large of it by Xochitl Alvizo

Feminism’s critical principle is the affirmation and promotion of the full humanity of women; an assertion that must be made in light of a world that diminishes women’s dignity and autonomy thereby authorizing their subjugation. Sexism is the word we use to name the attitudes, prejudices, and actions that work to diminish women’s dignity and autonomy for their subjugation. Patriarchy is the resultant ossified system of those attitudes, prejudices, and actions as they become the norm.

Elemental Grannies: Snippets from Over the Edge of the World, A Fairytale Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham

Introduction: An old woman, Rose begins spinning the tale the children never tire of hearing. Grannies Sweep, Spark, Dirt, and Brine, were old, so old, they forgot who they were and how they came to live where they did: a sheer pinnacle, a walking forest, an old shoe, a ship moored off a hidden shore.

But Rose has never told the whole story—to anyone. The story of a world these children have never seen, where the rich lived inside a vast dome, protected from heat and cold, rain, wind—and hunger. Nor do the children know about madness or cruelty. She has never told them about Noone, the power behind the dome, his obsession with immortality.

If she never tells these stories, who will remember the bravery of the beauty singers who daily risked the ultimate penalty—being thrown over the edge of world. Who will remember the intrepid children who danced defiantly on the dung heaps. If Rose does not tell her own story, who could imagine her birth deep inside the dome, the dangerous secret of her existence. A secret guarded her two huge aunties, once ragged outside boys, who became outrageous bodyguards in towering wigs and heels. To protect the new world and the people she loves, it is time for Rose to tell…

Let’s Have The Talk – What Does “The Birds and The Bees” Actually Mean: By Zoe Carlin

Recently, I have thought about a common idiom that has been used to refer to sexual reproduction, the birds and the bees. I became curious why animals that appear in most gardens were used as an example to explain where babies come from, until I did some research. It turns out that since the birds lay eggs, that is their representation of the female body and the bees represent the sperm due to pollination. It is a very subtle, overlooked message that can be disguised as being more age-appropriate to young children. However, I decided to dig a bit deeper. Ed Finegan, a USC professor of linguistics and law, has stated that this phrase has existed a lot longer than one might think. There is evidence of it being used in a somewhat sexual context going back to at least two authors, Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1825) and an entry from John Evelyn’s The Evelyn Diary (1644).

In Work Without Hope, Samuel Coleridge Taylor quotes, “All nature seems at work . . . The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing . . . and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.” This separation of the birds and bees is indicating the loneliness and sadness of missing out on a potential romantic connection. When going even further back in time to 1644, it was noticed in the Evelyn Diary that there was an entry discussing the interior design of St. Peter’s in Rome: “That stupendous canopy of Corinthian brasse; it consists of 4 wreath’d columns, incircl’d with vines, on which hang little putti [cherubs], birds and bees.” This description is illustrating that there is a possible sensual or sexual meaning of the architecture in St. Peters.

Miriam Is For the Girls by Zoe Carlin

The Book of Exodus is a well-known scripture, and it is one that many Jews, Christians, and even people who are non-religious are very familiar with. Growing up, our family continued to tell this story year after year during Passover. It was one of many classic Torah readings shown to us in our temple. So, one of the key figures in this story is Miriam, Moses’ older sister. Most remember that she helped her mother deliver Moses in secret at the Nile River when he was an infant due to the Pharaoh setting an order to kill every Hebrew son because of concerns of the population growing too much (Exodus 11:5-6). She also assisted in leading the Israelites across the Red Sea when Moses opened it up for the Hebrews to cross (Exodus 14:21-22). An article titled “Miriam: Midrash and Aggadah” shares a deeper analysis of the roles that Miriam upheld as a sister, a daughter, and a woman during this time. It has also informed my understanding of Miriam’s story.

Summer Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us be gentle with ourselves
as we cross the threshold
into summer,
as we both open our hearts to change
and open our hands to choice.
It is now that we both let things go
and celebrate what is flourishing,
what is thriving and growing
and calling us onward.
Let us be soft and supple,
luminous and languorous.
Let us practice the discipline of pleasure
and the liturgy of delight.
Let us protect wide margins for magic,
commit to our own life’s unfolding
and swim freely
in the current of the sacred
that is always available
to receive us
and welcome us home.

Today, I sit missing the orioles and thinking about cycles of change, how things grow and decline, and how we can choose to be present or not with what we see and feel. I tip my head back in the green filtered light of morning and discover berries beginning on the mulberry trees. The wild raspberries and blackberries too are tipped with small, firm caps of green. I am feeling the sort of overdue clarity that descends when I finally realize I can let something go, that not everything is mine to carry or mine to fix. I know that this clarity too will come and go, but for now, I welcome it, feeling the cool wind stirring my hair and brushing my shoulders as I enjoy the sunshine and the sound of hawks on the wing. There is a powerful hope in these blue sky days and for now, I bask in the sensation of both remembering and reclamation.

This year, as we tip into summer in the Northern hemisphere, the temperatures in my own Midwestern biome have been surprisingly cool, peaceful and rainy. In an era of climate change, this slow entry into the heat of the year has felt welcome and encouraging. Something that continues to inspire and teach me this year has been to start where my feet are, to return again and again to where I am on this earth and in my body. In a culture that encourages fragmentation and distraction, distance, discord, and dis-embodiment, this practice of return is an act of both rebellion and reclamation.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This year, sitting down to write and reflecting on the life lesson of starting where my feet are, I decided to go back through my past summer posts here to discover the other lessons I have learned from summers gone by. I chose thirteen lessons to share from past summer posts:

Womanist Sapphic Reflections on Sex, Desire, and Power by Chaz J.

**This post is based on my personal experience, research, survivor of the purity movement, and professional experience as a therapist and spiritual advisor of 5 years.

**Sapphic = women loving women <3

Everything is sex, except sex- which is power. Now ask yourself who is screwing you. – Janelle Monae

Desire, a flame that flickers, not always fanned to embers of the flesh, but today, let’s speak of its carnal heat, its dance with power, its intimate embrace with sex.

A tempest roils within, desire’s current a raging, untamed beast. A lifetime shrouded in the gloom of putrified dread, where yearning was condemned, branded a scarlet path to eternal fire, has left its indelible scar. The hollow pronouncements of warning, like the venomous whisper of James 1:14-15, still slither within, etched into the marrow of my bones: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” These words, seared into my soul, a brand of shame, a constant, gnawing reminder of the perceived treachery of wanting, the supposed sin of simply feeling and wanting.

Hydrangea Lessons, by Molly Remer

How to create a ritual:
Look at the sky.
Touch your skin.
Breathe deep in your belly.
Feel your heart beat.
Stand on the earth.
Let life carry you.

September 2024:

It is now that slender bush clover makes flower crowns along the roadside and coreopsis lifts its yellow faces to the sky. There is change in the air, whispering on cooling winds and shrieking by above the field on the feathers of broad-winged hawks. The last cicadas continue to drone and the apples hang rosy on the trees. The deck bears a sprinkling of yellow walnut leaves, and I picked up a brown and green patterned oak leaf to press into the pages of my prayers. It is now that I pause to steep, to listen to myself before pressing onward into the final part of the year. There is both an invitation and a summons here, to evaluate and renew, to consider the pace of life and whether to ease off or push onward. It is now that I remember that restoration is the antidote to depletion and I gather myself up, tenderly calling the fragments home, recollecting myself and taking time to look at where I am and what I have and what I’ve chosen. There are crows calling at the end of the driveway. I keep my eyes open for any passing monarchs. There is a slight hint of spiced pumpkin on the wind. The Virginia creeper has darkened to rusty red.

The Practices of Our Hope by Xochitl Alvizo

Years ago while I was a student at Boston University, a student group organized a spoken-word event. There were already some among the student body who were spoken word poets, but they also brought in Edyka Chilome, a poet, and as she refers to herself, a “cultural worker, futurist, and community weaver” (who’s also written with FAR as Erica Granados de la Rosa). She was not the first to speak, but before she did, she first took a minute to light some sage, lay it in a bowl in the middle of the circle space she had opened up in front of her, she called the four directions, and then said a prayer.