Arbor Day, Earth Day, May Day and Mother’s Day are deeply connected conceptually, etymologically, culturally and emotionally. The tree, with its roots buried deep in the earth and its branches reaching upward toward heaven, spread wide to embrace all of… Read More ›
Mary Icons There are three classic prototypes of Mary Icons, their collective messages point toward a new contemporary kind of trinity. Perhaps the concept of Mary is still undeveloped, as our society has changed her message is still provocative and… Read More ›
Carol Christ wrote about gift economy on this blog in 2013, and I am taken by her story of the woman who brought raisins or cracked nuts to the group even though she had very little. In beginning to encounter… Read More ›
I did not intend to find her. In fact I wasn’t even looking. But there she was, soaring before me, on my last night in Baidoa. This majestic Somali woman reached high into the heavens, engulfed in a glorious wraparound… Read More ›
Here in the high desert it has been raining off and on for the last few days. A giant puddle sits in the driveway and all the trees range in color from subtle shades of sage to emerald. Fringed Chamisa,… Read More ›
Spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones, so read at your own risk!
This week’s Torah portion is Emor, or Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23. It details purity and the priesthood including whose funeral a priest can attend, who can marry a priest, bodily blemishes and temple services, and under what circumstances daughters of… Read More ›
Judy Chicago, The Three Faces of Man from Power Play, 1985 On December 1, 2018, I most reluctantly moved off a stable yard where I had kept my beloved mare Boo, aka Queen Boodicca, for ten years. I… Read More ›
“I’m trying to tell you something about my life.” I joke with my friends that if the 1990’s weren’t so transphobic, I would have thrived as a trans lesbian. Citing my knowledge of the L Word, Pacific Northwest flannel sensibilities,… Read More ›
I entered the Silent Tomb; the Mosque felt devoid of Presence. We wandered through a myriad of glorious arched rooms, ornately carved woodwork – soft carpeted floors. Removing our shoes we spoke softly in deference to Something ineffable? Each tiled… Read More ›
In a previous post on FAR I wrote about some of the Easter customs in Greece in which pre-Christian and Christian practices intertwine, and I would like to pick up this thread again here. Today is ‘Bright Saturday’, the Saturday after… Read More ›
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Eve Ensler say those famed opening words, “I’m worried about vaginas.” As she went on to speak about the way our culture talks about and treats vaginas with terrible violence and shame,… Read More ›
Although Goddess traditions invite us to embrace a world of immanence and change, rather than to seek to escape into transcendence—which some yoga teachings seem to point toward—I have come to believe that the “still point,” is, as Eliot writes, where “the dance is.” In other words, daily practice might grant us the capacity to always move through the world with grace and joy. The mind will be steady as it encounters and embraces the turning world. We will be whole.
There is a saying, “Take time to smell the flowers.” Attributed to many different sources, it means among other things– take time and be grateful. Take time and relax. Take time. In that spirit I am sending along pictures… Read More ›
I hear this a lot: “You’re Mexican? You don’t look it?” A friend I have had for over 40 years always says, “I don’t think of you that way.” I am never quite sure how to respond to these opinions…. Read More ›
She speaks a various language. Bound in the bardo bereft vaguely present, almost dead. For fucking shining aloud let me back in. Come again, sweet terror Carve my shadow on your cave walls Render me a soul, source me… Read More ›
“We are an overflowing river. We are a hurricane. We are an earthquake. We are a volcano, a tsunami, a forest fire…” These words written by Judith Shaw speak to the underlying merging of woman’s anger with Earth’s natural disasters,… Read More ›
Today I am reposting the song and story of Kassiani, the Byzantine composer, poet, and hymnographer, who is not well-known to western feminists or in western history in general. In Christian Orthodox tradition, Kassiani’s most famous song will be sung… Read More ›
Even though I realized at least 17 years ago that it makes no theological sense to limit our symbols of the Divine to male symbols – Lord, God, Father – it took several years for this idea to embed itself… Read More ›
Today, Good Friday, marks the seventh anniversary of one of the most significant dates in my life – the adoption of my daughter, Sarah. On Easter Sunday, 2012 I wrote about the resurrection of my family. Much has changed since… Read More ›
Let me share with you the Goddess most honored as the Goddess of liminal time and space. It is our beloved Hekate, Great Goddess of the Three Ways, bridging Earth, Sea and Sky as we travel between worlds. In modern… Read More ›
I caution myself to be critical and nuanced. I’m sorry, folks. I just haven’t had such dazzling hope or remote interest in politics since. . . well, since I was a puppet junior high evangelist for an independent candidate my… Read More ›
Passover is a holiday of remembrance, of ritual re-enactment: this, we say, is what our ancestors experienced. This is what they felt and knew, what they tasted in their blood. The movement from slavery to liberation, from the soul’s winter to spring. We must never forget, we say, we must always remember, be thankful for our freedom, never take it for granted. “In each generation,” the Haggadah enjoins, “we should feel as if we personally had come out of Egypt.”
Last week, In the Room of Undressing where women strip themselves to the bone, my great-great-grandmothers on my father’s side spoke in me. I had been afraid they would judge me for not being a wife and mother like they… Read More ›
In “Time Telling in Feminist Theory,” Rita Felski suggests that there are four main ways feminists discuss and use time: redemption, regression, repetition and rupture. They are aptly named as they behave similar to their labels. Redemption is the linear… Read More ›
Last year I made a list of my recurring negative thoughts. Topping my list was: “There’s never enough time.” As a freelance writer, I lead a life of frantic multi-tasking, each month peppered with deadlines and to-do lists, newsletters to… Read More ›
I’ve had two distinct vocations during my lifetime—so far. Three, really, if you count parenting a vocation. Parenting took up a lot of my time for many years. There were aspects to it that were fulfilling, enlightening, and satisfying, but… Read More ›
Today would be my brother Dale’s 75th birthday. To honor him, I’m rewriting an article I wrote for a business magazine in Orange Co., CA, in 1992. Although I was a regular columnist for that business magazine, I seldom wrote… Read More ›
In our society, relationships with food are complicated. Sometimes we might be anxious that our food is not safe, that we are not told the whole story, that we have to educate ourselves on what we can and guess the… Read More ›
Sometimes it whirls together, a superstorm of pain and despair, and the shittiness of it all is just too damned much to bear girls and women beaten, raped, abused, and all you nice guys don’t care and my little daughter… Read More ›
