Recently FAR contributor Sara Frykenberg posted an article to Facebook that caused me to think again about the now-famous essay by Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person,” Gina Crosley-Corcoran does an excellent job of including issues of class, meaning poverty, into the discourse about race and privilege using the theory of intersectionality. If I am honest, the tensions between race and poverty have made the owning my white privilege challenging.
Like Crosley-Corcoran, I was raised in poverty. After my parents divorced in the early 1960s, our fall into poverty was pronounced. My mother liked to move, so much so that I attended no less than 15 different schools before high school. We lived in one house for two years without hot water. I learned early on the stigma of poverty, when even a Catholic school uniform could not protect me from signs of inferiority. Perhaps worse was the alienation I experienced as a young girl when other children’s parents discovered my father’s second job as a tattoo artist. Once that was known, most friends could no longer play with me outside of school. My psyche situated itself between shame and love, with the burden of keeping my humiliation a secret from the rest of my family. Continue reading “White Privilege: Confessions of a Poor White Girl by Cynthia Garrity-Bond”
I’ve been married for most of my life. Marriage, along with all our institutions, is influenced by and therefore takes shape from the culture/society in which it exists. When I got married, I had certain expectations that I’d absorbed from my environment. Attaining “marital bliss” by achieving an indistinguishable oneness with my spouse was part and parcel of it all. Popular thought tells us that marriage (especially heterosexual marriage) brings about the completion of two individuals. How often do we hear about people searching for, and sometimes finding, a person they label as their soulmate? People seem to long for that one human being they think will make them happy.
Boann, Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Fertility, Inspiration, Knowledge and Creativity was one of the Tuatha De Danann (People of Danu). She was associated with the 70 mile long river Boyne in Northeast Ireland and its source, the Well of Segais. Some bards say that long, long ago when the world was young and wild places were everywhere, Boann initiated that spring by walking counter-clockwise around stones found there, causing the water from under the earth to spring forth with great strength and rush down to the sea. The pool formed by the spring was encircled by nine sacred hazelnut trees, whose nuts could impart knowledge when eaten. The salmon of wisdom swam in the waters of this hidden pool from which the river Boyne flows.
As a practicing witch, feminist, energy worker and a student of life, I am often puzzled as to why, in this day and age, we continue using the terms “masculine” and “feminine” as descriptive modifiers. What exactly does it mean when we call an energy masculine or feminine, anyway? While I understand that these are descriptors that generally address what are typical characteristics – why do we insist on being so vague, misunderstood and perhaps even, insulting, depending on who we are speaking to? 
In my home city of Cleveland, Ohio, yesterday Donald Trump received the nomination to run as the Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 election. While we were on an upswing following the Cavaliers NBA championship and have been highlighted as “Believeland,” the nomination of Trump is another disappointing and health hazardous event that can be added to the reasons Cleveland is sometimes called “the mistake on the lake.”
“All children are our children.” As I was posting my 
I have entitled this post 
One of the most popular texts in Thai Buddhism (which is of Theravada tradition) is called 
My book club recently read 
Feminism and Religion 