Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
Second Class Citizen
When he backed me
up against the tree
inching towards me
menacingly
with his big powerful car
I couldn’t believe
what was happening.
I was holding the space
for a car full of dogs
waiting to park
just behind him.
He got out of the car
And I said
You can’t do this
this spot is taken.
Six feet tall, he sneered
You can’t save spaces
in a parking lot.
Come with me in your imagination to an old land, a Demi-Olympus, a fabled and possibly invented land to the north of Mount Olympus, home and throne of the fabled Olympian gods. It is to this Other Olympus that the gods have retired. Now they reside in the Divine Rest Home whose proprietor is a black goddess. Not African black, She is as black as space, and if we look closely at Her, we can see galaxies and constellations and comets in Her. She is the Ur-Goddess, the Divine Creatrix, eldest of all, and She answers to the name Mama. (Note: many years ago, I actually saw this goddess after an all-day asthma attack that nearly killed me. She was in the ER with me.)
Helping Mama run the Divine Rest Home are Gaea, the mother of all life, and the Titans and Titanesses, who are older than all the gods who have come to the Divine Rest Home to…well…rest. The Titans and Titanesses held numerous important stations in the primeval universe and should probably retire, too, but they just keep going. That’s probably a good thing, as most of the retired gods need a great deal of attention.
Trigger warning: rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual content
In Part 1 of this story, I introduced a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive relationship. To recap:
Cultural violence is: “…any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both.”
Cultural violence against women is: Normalization and promotion of pornography, prostitution, degradation, and sexual objectification of females in media, predominantly male language in civic, business, and religious institutions, gender roles and stereotypes, misogynist humor, gaslighting, minimizing or denying any of these forms of violence.
Our whole lives, we are taught to be nice. To be considerate of others. To play fairly. To fess up when we mess up. Do unto others, turn the other cheek, respect your elders, obey the rules.
And for what? For what?
So some hyper-entitled coldhearted sneering rapist fuckheads can cheat and steal and lie and game the system until rape survivors are criminals and rapists are victims, while they rob us all blind, crush our freedoms, and rip away our future?
Fuck this sexist shit.
I am so done with this fucking misogynist society, where the president of the most powerful world empire mocks a rape survivor and laughs about assaulting women.
Continue reading “Fuck This Sexist Shit by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”
In her novel, Kingdom of Women, Rosalie Morales Kearns imagines a reality that is post-patriarchy, and post male violence while showing us what near-future women had to go through in order to get to that reality. Morales Kearns weaves this story through the voices of multiple characters. One of these characters is Averil Parnell, a female Catholic priest. Part I of the book opens with a woman visiting Averil to seek her counsel in regards to taking revenge on her male college professor who has been harassing her ever since she refused to sleep with him.
While Averil seems to be of little help with this particular conversation, we learn that Averil was one of the twenty three original female priests that were to be ordained by the Catholic Church. On the day of their joint ordination however, the Cathedral Massacre took place and twenty two of the female seminarians were killed in cold blood. Averil then, is most definitely a woman who understands the yearning for revenge, the feeling of survivors guilt, and the expectation to be a wonderful priest for her dear friends who had that chance ripped away from them.
At the same time this conversation is taking place it has become clear that small groups of vigilante women are popping up around the world and punishing men for acts of violence against women. The male dominated government of course sees all these punishing acts as coincidental, explaining them away in one way or another, or ignoring them completely, never imagining that it is in fact the beginning of women rising up to truly end male dominance and violence.
Continue reading “Kingdom of Women BOOK REVIEW by Katie M. Deaver”
Trigger warning: rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual content
In Part 1 of this story, I introduced a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young woman in an abusive relationship. To recap:
Cultural violence is: “…any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both.”[1]
Cultural violence against women is: Normalization and promotion of pornography, prostitution, degradation, and sexual objectification of females in media, predominantly male language in civic, business, and religious institutions, gender roles and stereotypes, misogynist humor, gaslighting, minimizing or denying any of these forms of violence.
Part 1 ended right before my ex convinced me to leave MIT and move with him to Minnesota. I had been trying my best to please him by sculpting my appearance to match his preferences, believing that it was my job as a female partner to try to satisfy my male partner sexually.
I am a woman, a feminist, a Muslim. These three things are me, they are things that I have become, in that order. One is born with feminine sex, but it is only a biological determinism. I was born female and I have chosen to continue living as a woman. I decided to be and live as a feminist. I felt called to be a Muslim and I chose to listen to that call.
I love to be a woman, even in a world that hates me. The woman that I am, with my way of thinking, acting and feeling, my way of seeing the world and myself, is not a product of my sex, but of the story that I have gone through since I left my mother’s womb. The same goes for all women. Even beings born in the same country, city, year, even those who are sisters of blood, do not have the exact same story.
Continue reading “Some Thoughts from Experience by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”
I had a startling experience in church recently. It was Father’s Day, and the pastor was talking about how “God is our heavenly Father.” For the first time in 17 years, that idea held some appeal to me. But no sooner did the thought enter my mind, then it was ripped away by the realization that my church will never allow me to symbolize the divine as a “father.”
I grew up with “God the Father” language saturating my churches. I also grew up with a rageful, unsafe, sometimes abusive father, who was also wonderful, empowering, and feminist in many ways. Seventeen years ago, I attended my first seminary lecture on the topic of Feminist Theology. That day changed my life, as did my exposure to feminist theology throughout seminary and at a queer Methodist congregation. My journey took me through more scholarship and liturgy, jobs as chaplain or as assistant pastor struggling to convince my communities that sexism matters, parenting young daughters who lament their own subconscious male divine programming, and finding a prophetic call to speak, write, and sing the Female Divine. Continue reading “My Church Won’t Let Me Call the Divine “Father” by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”
They came from
Life giving Waters,
emerging from a Lake
at the Beginning of time.
Avanyu –
Serpent,
Spirit of the River
pecked into stone
or painted
on canyon walls
embodies their story.
The Tewa settled above
the Great River Banks.
Roaring water flowed
through tributaries
mountain gorges.
The People gave thanks.
Water meant Life.
Each village was the center
of the Tewa’s First world.
Bound together by
Women who tended
holy household shrines,
prayed for rain,
created fires,
gathered seed,
ground food,
grew babies,
dug clay to shape
earthen pots.
This was the Second world
of the Tewa.
For over ten years, I’ve been teaching a work of early Jewish mysticism known as Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation. There are widely differing opinions on the book’s origin and dating, but many scholars date it to the sixth century. Its core concept can be described simply: the Divine used the Hebrew letters as metaphysical channels to create the different aspects of reality: the directions, the elements, the planets, the months of the year, and so forth. Each letter is a channel by which God creates a unique form or entity, and meditating on the letters provides us with a connection to divine creative power. In its discussion of the letters, Sefer Yetzirah shows a strong connection to feminine imagery, and thus helps the later kabbalah develop its own link to the feminine.
Sefer Yetzirah shows influences from Aristotle to Gnosticism, and is often viewed as a work of Jewish philosophy. However, it is also a work of meditation, giving the reader instruction on how to focus and connect to the divine. Scholars such as Richard Hayman and Marla Segol have noted that the book’s structure and content connect it to magical literature: for example, the book has a deep concern with “sealing” the space of the world: letters of the Divine Name are used to seal the six directions of the universe. In a similar way, ceremonial magicians of the ancient world used sealing ritual, including the incantation bowls that were buried in the corners of a home to keep out evil forces. The book, like much ceremonial magic of the region, also discusses the elements. However, Sefer Yetzirah has a three-element system rather than a four or five-element system. The three formative elements are air, water, and fire.
Continue reading “The Three Mothers: Feminine Elements and the Early Kabbalah by Jill Hammer”
Feminism and Religion 