Feminism – Page 64 – Feminism and Religion

Celtic Myth, Moon Blood, and the White Beauty Standard by Marisa Goudy

My woman’s body is entering the dark time of the moon, even with blinding white snow lashing the windows, even with a full moon tracing its way far above thick clouds. My mood is black and soon I’ll be flowing red, and the snow will just drive on white, white, white.

In The White Goddess, Robert Graves tells us: “…the New Moon is the white goddess of birth and growth; the Full Moon, the red goddess of love and battle; the Old Moon, the black goddess of death and divination.”

The Celt in me feels cradled by this imagery, even if, as Judith Shaw and Carol P. Christ have pointed out elsewhere on this site, the idea of maid, mother, and crone is a modern invention, not gift from the past. I agree with Christ: “My suggestion is that we give up the idea that the details of contemporary Goddess Spirituality are rooted in and authorized by tradition. We can instead acknowledge that though we are inspired by the past, we are the ones who are creating contemporary Goddess Spirituality.”

Continue reading “Celtic Myth, Moon Blood, and the White Beauty Standard by Marisa Goudy”

My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.

This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed into the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father and the celebrated chronicle of my brother.

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

I am an expat author. My home is everywhere and nowhere. A wanderer, I have lived in many different places, from Minnesota, my birthplace, with its rustling marshes haunted by the cries of redwing blackbirds, to Bavaria with its dark forests and dazzling meadows and pure streams where otter still live, to my present home in the haunted moorlands of Pendle Witch country in Lancashire, England. My entire adult life has been a literal journey of finding myself in the great world.

For as long as I remember, I longed to be a writer. As a novelist I am on a mission to write women back into history. To tell the neglected, unwritten stories of women like my pioneering foremothers who emigrated from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in the 1860s to break the prairie soil of southern Minnesota.

To a large extent, women have been written out of history. Their lives and deeds have become lost to us. To uncover their buried truths, we must act as detectives, studying the sparse clues that have been handed down to us. We must learn to read between the lines and fill in the blanks. My heroine’s journey, in other words, is about reclaiming the lost heroines of history. My quest is to give voice to ancestral memory of that lost motherline.

Continue reading “My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt”

Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ

When the word “matriarchy” is spoken, the first question that comes up is: what about men? Most people imagine that matriarchy must oppress men—just as patriarchy oppresses women. Sadly, concern about the oppression of women in patriarchy is less automatic.

In the classical dualisms (stemming from Plato) that structure much of western thought up to the present day, nature is associated with finitude and death, which are viewed as limitations. Men are said to be able to transcend finitude and death through their rational capacities, while women are said to be tied to the body and less capable of transcending it. This becomes a justification for the subordination and domination of women.

While western thought disparages nature, the egalitarian matriarchal Minangkabau people of western Sumatra, base their worldview on the principle of growth in nature. The Minangkabau say that they “take the good in nature” and “throw away the bad.” While they recognize chaos and violence within nature, they choose to focus on the good: the powers of birth and growth.

The Minangkabau believe that women who nurture growth in children and rice exemplify the good within nature. Continue reading “Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ”

On Belief and Action by Ivy Helman

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_o My birthday was last Wednesday. Perhaps more than any other time of the year (yes, even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), the days and weeks leading up to my birthday are filled with personal reflection. Not that religious and secular new years don’t give me pause to reflect, but I think the lack of buzz around this personal event seems to offer me more space and time to think.

This year more than past years, I’ve been thinking about beliefs: what I believe in; how ideas and concepts that were important to me last year are less so this year and vice versa; how beliefs motivate me to act or not; what role belief plays in my life; why some beliefs demand solid resolve and others not so much; and so on. I wanted to share with you some of my personal reflection. Continue reading “On Belief and Action by Ivy Helman”

If this be Madness … by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Shams

Shamima Shaikh (1960 – 1998) was South Africa’s best-known Muslim women’s rights activist. She was also a brave anti-Apartheid activist, notable Islamic feminist, community worker, journalist and devoted mother who died, 37 years old, from breast cancer. After the Holy month of Ramadan in 2016, I spoke with Islamic Feminist Shehnaz Haqqani about the new-to-me figure of Shamima. I was very excited to know about her and inspired by her fierce and at the same time compassionate moral courage. That year I wrote some pieces about her.

I asked, 18 months ago, Na’eem Jeenah, who was married to late Shamima, if there was a book about her where I could amplify my knowledge about her activism. He said, so far, there wasn´t. Later, I commented to my friend and Chilean feminist comrade, Rocio A., that the idea of an anthology book for Shamima Shaikh had arisen in me.

You must be mad, completely mad, you know? – she said

I am a feminist claiming that we women are people in a patriarchal world – I replied – of course I am mad. Continue reading “If this be Madness … by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

How “Egalitarian Matriarchy” Works among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

Currently I am reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s a-mazing book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy for the third time. In it Sanday describes the living egalitarian matriarchal culture of four million people of the Minangkabau culture of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Sanday spent parts of two decades living among the Minangkabau before publishing her book. I can understand why it took her so long to come to terms with a culture so different from our own.

The Minangkabau are matrilineal, defining family relationships through the mother line. They are also matrilocal: extended families live in big houses traditionally crowned by symbolic buffalo horns reaching to the sky; husbands, affectionately called “roosters” come to live in the “chicken coop” of their wives. The big houses and surrounding farmlands are held in common by the maternal clan. This much is relatively easy to understand, once we are willing to accept that not all societies are patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal. Continue reading “How “Egalitarian Matriarchy” Works among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ”

Inner Garbage (Fear) vs. Inner Goddess (Love) by Vanessa Soriano

I’m sitting on my meditation pillow for the thousandth time searching for clarity. Initially, going within feels like traversing a jungle; swinging from one thought branch to another. I’m itching for some peace and I’m almost certain this isn’t the way to it. But, I’ve been here before and I won’t quit breathing through the discomfort. I know I will greet the inner goddess soon enough. Getting past the noise is part of accessing her wisdom. The noise teaches me discernment (if I allow it to).

Eventually, the monkey mind gathers up all the branches and turns them into a prodigious figure that blocks the sun inside. Hello darkness my old friend. Inner garbage (fear) makes her entrance. I’m still breathing. Eyes closed. Determined through slow, rhythmic breaths, to move past her. I know I cannot run from her. She’s faster and outwits me every time. Continue reading “Inner Garbage (Fear) vs. Inner Goddess (Love) by Vanessa Soriano”

With Our Tears, Let Compassion Flow: Remembering the Armenian Genocide by Laura Shannon

Today, April 24, is the worldwide day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide of 1915. On this day three years ago, marking the centenary of the genocide, I wrote about dance as an expression of solidarity with the Armenians people, and with all victims of genocide throughout history and throughout the world. You can find that piece here.

Now as then, I am encouraging my students to dance Armenian dances with their groups this week, or even simply to light a candle, listen to Armenian music (some recommendations are listed at the end of this post), with an open heart. How better to heal the wounds of history than with such tiny and intimate acts of compassion?

The root of the word ‘compassion’ essentially means ‘to suffer with’, and I think that one of the gifts of our own suffering might be that we can begin to have sympathy for those who have suffered like us.

Through compassion, our own heartbreak helps our hearts to be broken open. Although suffering can cause us to feel terribly isolated and utterly alone, at the same time, our pain opens our hearts in sympathy for the pain that others feel. To paraphrase Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa, this enables us to ‘reach out to help others… to discover a greater universe and a fuller and fuller broken heart. This is not something to feel bad about; it is a cause for rejoicing.’

Continue reading “With Our Tears, Let Compassion Flow: Remembering the Armenian Genocide by Laura Shannon”

Choosing to End Love by Carol P. Christ

A month or so ago I wrote that women need to learn what it means to choose our lovers and partners. I have just learned another lesson in this process. When I wrote about the power to choose, I was in love with someone I thought was a good, respectful, and honest man. In other parts of his life, he may be, but in relation to me he was not.

Suffice it to say that this man “neglected” to tell me a very important piece of information about his life. This detail was so unusual that no one could have anticipated it. If he had told me this fact from the beginning, I would never have entered into the relationship with him, and I am pretty sure he knew that. As soon as he did tell me, I ended the relationship. As we were saying goodbye, he tried to seduce me. I opened the door and shoved him out. In the past I might I might have given in, or if I hadn’t, I might have felt that I was the victim, that he rejected me. In a delightful clarity, I felt absolutely no confusion, regret, or ambivalence. I chose. Continue reading “Choosing to End Love by Carol P. Christ”

Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright

Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break.

I remember so vividly entering graduate school in my early forties and being told I was an “eco – feminist” by my professors. What does that phrase mean I asked having no relationship that I knew of to feminism. Feminists, I thought vaguely, naively, even stupidly, burned bras and hated men…

I was asked to read “Woman and Nature; The Roaring Inside Her” by Susan Griffin to help me see who I was, and after finishing this one book I submerged myself in feminist writings like a starved woman – child. My teachers were right. I was a feminist – an eco –feminist because I had already made the connection between what was happening to the Earth and what had happened to me. Every tree that was chopped down was a part of me, every stream that was polluted was a part of me, every animal that was slaughtered was a part of me because I was a part of Nature. I owed my life to Nature, the only mother I had ever had. I loved Her, honored her, became her fierce advocate and in the process She eventually taught me to love myself.

Continue reading “Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright”