Nurture life.
Walk in love and beauty.
Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.
Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.
Take only what you need.
Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.
Approach the taking of life with great restraint.
Practice great generosity.
Repair the web
In Rebirth of the Goddess, I offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.
Though several of the touchstones are influenced by indigenous teachings, the third touchstone, “trust the knowledge that comes through the body,” is a response to the separation of mind and body common in western cultures. In the Symposium, Socrates taught that the journey of the soul begins in the appreciation of physical beauty, but ends in the contemplation of unchanging transcendental beauty. Christian ascetics believed that the body must be disciplined and subdued in order for the mind to commune with divinity. Up through the present day, Christians are taught that the pleasures of the body are a temptation because we are destined for something “higher.” Continue reading “Trust the Knowledge that Comes through the Body: Heal Yourself, Heal the World by Carol P. Christ”
For almost four years, I’ve been living with the long-term effects of an inner ear lesion. The lesion is long gone but its side effects are not. Throughout the day, I feel a combination of unsteadiness and sudden, unpredictable sensations of movement. On better days, the unsteadiness is almost non-existent and the feelings of movement are minimal. On worse days, I’m troubled with a type of brain fog that makes it hard to concentrate as well as disrupting unpredictable sensations of being on a boat that can’t pick one direction in which to move. It’s frustrating, tiring and demoralizing.
I was recently invited to address a gathering of resident chaplains in the pastoral care department of a major urban medical center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.
In 
In a recent interview on Voices of the Sacred Feminine on “
Many of us have a growing sense that we are at a crucial inflection point in our civilization and at a crossroads for the future of our planet. I’m not sure if that point needs to be defended, explained or expounded upon. To me it seems completely transparent, glaringly and frighteningly obvious. I live with that knowledge constantly, which translates into grief for the biodiversity that has already been lost and is accelerating; fear for the turmoil and human-made ecological catastrophes that will cause more and more people to lose their land and homes, leading to increased acts of violence towards the vulnerable;
