Feminism and Spirituality – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

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.

Listen to the wise women by Molly Remer

In 2012, shortly after I finished my priestess ordination process and I’d been facilitating women’s retreats for two years, I got a wild idea to go to a goddess festival of some kind. I did a google search and found one that sounded great—Gaea Goddess Gathering–and it was happening in just two weeks. Imagine my surprise to then look at the bottom of the screen and see that it was located only a five-hour drive from me, just over the border into Kansas. I decided it was “meant to be.” My mom and a friend signed up with me (and my then 18 month old daughter) and we packed up my van and went! The night before we left on our adventure, I sat down at the kitchen table and felt a knife-like stinging pain on the back of my leg. I’d accidentally sat on a European giant hornet (these are not regular hornets, they are literally giant hornets about two inches long).

Summer Steeping, by Molly M. Remer

“It was one of those days so clear, so silent, so still, you almost feel the earth itself has stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.”

—Katherine Mansfield quoted in Meditations for People Who (may) Worry too Much

The editor of this anthology, Anne Wilson Schaef, goes on to say:

“When we do stop, many times we look around and realize that we are the only ones rushing around. We realize that the roses, the trees, even the clouds seems suspended in space, and it is as if the universe has paused for a breather. Life has time to experience itself.

Often, when we stop and let ourselves take in the beauty that is around us, we realize there is much more than we originally imagined. Our eyes begin to see beauty in the cracks in the sidewalk, the crookedness of tree limbs, the cragginess of faces, even the color of cars.

We don’t have to travel to see beauty. It is everywhere.

How much more alive we are when we can feel those times that the earth has ‘stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.’”

Do you have time for beauty? When was the last time you stopped in astonishment? What is astonishing you lately? Where are you discovering beauty?

A House for the Goddess by Annelinde Metzner

For the past few years I’ve been contributing to FAR as a poet. So grateful for the opportunity to connect with you wise women! This month I realize I should share with you another side of me, my music.

On June 8th, I produced, directed and composed the music for “A House for the Goddess” in Asheville, North Carolina, featuring 29 performers including two sopranos, a cellist, myself and another pianist, two dancers, an MC and a women’s choir. The concert, whose venue was offered generously by Land of the Sky United Church of Christ, was a sellout, and over three thousand dollars was raised for the Linda Norgrove Foundation for the women and children of Afghanistan (https://lindanorgrovefoundation.org.)

My compositions, both choral pieces and solo art songs, always find their birth through the inspiration of poetry. At this venue, the texts of the poetry were displayed on two screens overhead as the songs were sung.

Miriam Speaks by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Intro: I have been working on a project inspired by Charlene Spretnak and her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece. I am writing biblical stories through the eyes and words of the women. The scribes who wrote down the tales of the bible, wrote mostly from men’s point of view. And they had their own which was to destroy evidence of the Goddesses. I tell Noah’s story through Naamah, his wife. Abram and Sarai’s journey to Egypt through the eyes of Sarah. Exodus in Miriam’s voice. In my telling, Miriam went to Midian with Moses and, while there, experienced the Burning Bush and worked with Moses’ wife Zipporah to protect knowledge of the Goddesses. Below is an abridged version of this section of Miriam’s tale.

I look around at your world today. You, yes you, are my descendants. My beloveds. I mourn for what you’ve lost. No, I am angry, how could things have gotten this bad? I dare you, I dare any of you to challenge my work. We did everything we could. It should not have taken this long to find our clues. But then I see the job the scribes did. It was better and more thorough than even we, who saw so much, could have imagined. I look around at this precious earth we bequeathed to you and see how damaged it is.

Judy Chicago, Feminist Trailblazer by Joyce Zonana and Janet Maika’i Rudolph

“Instead of looking to the male world for approval, I had to learn to rely on my own instincts. In some strange way, the rejections I faced strengthened me, but only because they forced me to learn to live as I saw fit and to use my values and judgment as my guides.”
The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago

Janet: I live near New York City and am fortunate to be close to many museums. The New Museum has been showing an exhibit by Judy Chicago that takes up the entire facility of four floors. And it is remarkable. Not only is the breadth of her work astounding but so are the stories of how she has had to fight to be accepted in a man’s world of art. Joyce Zonana first recommended that I go. This blogpost came about as part of a discussion between the two of us.