Towards the end of Braiding Sweetgrass, mother, biologist, and member of the Citizen Potawami Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer sets out at the end of winter to visit a forest area near her home that she considers hers not in name but in virtue of her love and care for it. On arriving, she discovers that the forest is no more, having been clear-cut by the owner. The wildflowers and the plants she has harvested over the years have sprouted up, but Kimmerer knows that without the forest cover they will be burned by the sun and their places taken by brambles. Continue reading “Meeting the Windigo by Carol P. Christ”
Category: Feminism
Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) by Barbara Ardinger
Note: This story was originally posted early in 2016. I’m posting it again because, thanks to the state of UNkindness the Abuser-in-chief has pasted all over the semi-civilized Semi-United States, we need lessons in kindness more than ever before. I bet you agree with me!
“Curses on that grasshopper!” exclaimed the ever-busy Madame Fourmi. “All he ever does is play. He’ll be sorry when winter comes.”
And so it went. Every day, Mme. Fourmi spent the morning scrubbing her front steps. And Monsieur Cigale?
“Partaaaaayyyyy!” Every day, he sped by on his skateboard. “Hey, Auntie Ant, stop cleaning the concrete and come and play with us. We’re gonna start a band!”
“Not on your life,” muttered this grandmother, most of whose conversations with her many daughters and granddaughters consisted of instructions on how to properly clean their homes and hills and how to prepare and store food for the winter. “Life is serious business, it is, it is. We need to plan ahead.”
New Beginnings: Re-Birthing Myself a Million Times and One by Elisabeth Schilling
I think being a mother must be an amazing experience. I don’t really know the glimmers and shadows of any life but mine, even though I would be more than happy to listen. Recently, I’ve been reading the poems of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet, U.K. Laureate, and once partner to poet Jackie Kay, and she writes something in one of her poems (“A Clear Note”) that I resonate with: “Never have kids. Give birth to yourself.” It is not Duffy, the narrator, who says this, but a character named Moll.
In the triptych poem, three women—Agatha, Moll, and Bernadette, three generations of women, speak to and about each other through time and space. The quote is just something Moll recalls saying to her daughter, Bernadette one night when she is drunk. I of course do not think a woman cannot give birth to herself if she has children. But it is certainly a good (in my opinion, for I wish it so) excuse for myself, revising this line of verse in my own voice: I will never have kids; I need the entirety of life to birth myself.
Continue reading “New Beginnings: Re-Birthing Myself a Million Times and One by Elisabeth Schilling”
Celtic Awen, Spiritual Homecoming, and Singing with Trees by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
Does your name have a special meaning? Mine does. In fact, in one corner of the world, you would be very hard pressed to find anyone who did not know the significance of the name Trelawney and its history. They could probably even sing you a rousing song about it:
And shall Trelawny live? Or shall Trelawny die?
There’s twenty thousand Cornish here, will know the reason why![1]
But growing up in New England, no one had ever heard the name Trelawney before, or the name “Cornwall,” the land of Trelawney. If I said “Celtic,” they would finally nod.
Then with the internet came affordable communication “across the pond” to Britain, and my earliest internet explorations connected me with Cornwall, where my grandfather came from. I taught myself Cornish folk songs, I found folktales, recipes, and a more richly detailed cultural nourishment than my Cornish grandfather had managed to pass along to us. A lifelong mystic and Methodist minister, but if you ever asked my grandfather his religion, he would reply, “Druid,” with just that hint of mysterious twinkle in his eye.
Time to Dismantle the Myth of the Nation State? by Carol P. Christ
I am a citizen of two countries currently being torn apart by popular nationalism. In Greece, the cry is “Macedonia is only Greek,” while in the United States a nation of immigrants is being told that it must fear being invaded by immigrants. The truth is that the idea of a nation state is a fiction created in the nineteenth century. It is high time to dismantle it.
Here is the Greek case. Phillip of Macedon invaded from the north and created a federation of Greek states in 338 BCE. His son Alexander the (so-called) Great conquered territories extending as far as India before his death in 323 BCE, establishing the seat of his empire in the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Phillip and Alexander are claimed as Greek, but in fact Phillip forced independent Greek-speaking city states into union under his rule.
Although the Greek language became the lingua franca of the Alexandrian Empire, the people who spoke forms of Greek did not become an ethnically pure free Greek nation under Alexander. Rather they became subjects in an empire ruled by a king that united people of different cultural traditions under a newly imposed Greek language. It is probable that Phillip and Alexander originally spoke a form of Greek, but even this is debated by experts. Continue reading “Time to Dismantle the Myth of the Nation State? by Carol P. Christ”
Dear Mary by Sara Wright
This piece was written in response to Gina Messina’s recent Feminism and Religion piece “Who is God?”
Dear Mary,
When I responded to a post on feminism and religion this morning I wrote that you were my first goddess. As a child I knew little beyond that you were the “Mother of God,” and I found your presence immensely comforting, even seeking you out in secret, entering your rose garden in a local monastery. I needed you so.
Early in adolescence I learned that your life was one of purity, sacrifice, and loss. Your purity left me bereft. How could a young Victorian girl be “good enough” to serve such a figure? I was fierce and passionate – a thorny red rose – with an empty hole in my heart.
Sadly, I released you and chose your sister the whore, the Black Goddess in disguise… but I didn’t know that then; I only knew that the “black” woman succumbed to her flesh as I did, covered herself in shame…What lies Patriarchy tells…
A Meditation on Revolution In the Vagina Monologues by Marie Cartier
“It’s like feminist summer camp, except it’s in February,” said Shaina, the director, “I’m not sure how to re-enter the world.”
I agreed. How to re-enter the world where vaginas have little voice? Where asking a woman what her vagina would wear does not make sense. Or what would it say? It’s not just what would it say, it’s not having a voice at all. My vagina.
I have performed in West Hollywood, California’s production of the Vagina Monologues (to benefit Planned Parenthood, check it out here and here) for the past three years. This year we raised over $5,000.
Continue reading “A Meditation on Revolution In the Vagina Monologues by Marie Cartier”
#WorldHiyabDay at Issue by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
When World Hiyab Day (WHD) was held for the first time in 2013, I was an enthusiastic supporter. Even my friend Maria de los Angeles from Venezuela, wore a headscarf for a day in sisterhood. She went to her job and celebrated her birthday in a tropical country, fully head-covered.
I am a muslim woman who wears headscarves and turbans. I benefit widely from “Hiyab Fashion,” an opportunity I have to be creative and original with my outfits. I do assume there are good intentions and will of sisterhood behind WHB, but as years go by, I’ve got disappointed about the celebration. According to its founder, Nazma Khan, an Islamic clothing entrepreneur, the purpose of WHD is “the recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty.”
Maybe I am too picky, but this statement disgusst me for its hint of sexism and slutshamming. If heardscarf is equal to modesty and modesty is equal to virtue so, I wonder: Continue reading “#WorldHiyabDay at Issue by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”
Making a New Home: It’s Not So Easy by Carol P. Christ
I am sitting in my studio apartment with my computer on my lap on a cold, windy, and rainy day in Voutes, Heraklion, Crete. My little dog is curled up asleep, seeing no reason to awake on a day like this.
I made the decision to leave my beautiful home in Molivos, Lesbos last winter, renting a small Air BNB house in Heraklion the winter and a small house in Pachia Ammos for the summer. Then back to Lesbos for 2 weeks, on to the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for 2 weeks, back to Lesbos for 2 weeks, on to America for a speaking tour, back to Lesbos for a few more weeks with an interval in Thessaloniki, and on to Crete for the New Year holidays.
Things went pretty much as planned up until my return to Crete. There were a few glitches, but I enjoyed being in Heraklion and then in by the sea in Pachia Ammos, and I was beginning to make new friends. I enjoyed my time in Lesbos and my trips to the US and Canada. I was looking forward to my return to Crete. Continue reading “Making a New Home: It’s Not So Easy by Carol P. Christ”
I Celebrate Love by Elise M. Edwards
Happy Valentine’s Day! I know, I know… so many of us do not like this holiday. It’s too commercialized, we say. We don’t need card-makers or florists to tell us how or when to show affection. Some of us don’t like Valentine’s Day because it reminds us of loves we have lost or never found. I get it. This day can seem shallow, overhyped, and falsely sentimental. It can be lonely. And yet, I won’t let today pass without celebrating and honoring love. Love is too important to concede to commercial interests.
Love, in its many forms, keep us alive and able to endure. Love is powerful because it is expansive, growing in unexpected places and ways. We tend to separate our celebrations of romantic love, friendship, familial love, self-love, and religious devotion. We make distinctions between our valentines and “galentines.” Rarely do we shout for joy in ecstatic worship while also celebrating the passionate longings of our innermost desires. But occasionally, in my religious tradition, we let our disparate loves come together. We unite them on holy feast days, enjoying the sensual pleasures of good food and company to mark spiritual occasions. So that’s my inspiration. Today, I’m celebrating love by reflecting on various forms of love merged together and sharing insight from poets and mystics about the power and beauty experienced in love.
Feminism and Religion 