General – Page 104 – Feminism and Religion

SpiritualiTEA with Chasity Podcast, Episode 3 by Chasity Jones

An excerpt from SpiritualiTEA with Chasity Podcast Episode 3: Why are we afraid of Divination??? What is divination?

Divination is from Latin divinare “to foresee, to be inspired by a god”. (Goleman, David. The Varieties of the Meditative Experience. London: Rider, 1975.)

“DIVINATION IS A SACRAMENT!!” – Chastity S. Jones

This is beautiful to me because it reminds me of how when the prophets would begin to prophesy in the bible or even the explosive forward movement of the spread of the gospel- driven by the Holy Spirit, as well as those who documented the gospel are all described as being inspired by God.

The most popular form of divination right now is tarot cards but we will discuss how there are many other forms- including forms that are acceptable in the church RIGHT NOW.

There are many bible verses cursing those who divine but I want to reiterate that one bible verse cannot be a comprehensive ethic or set of ethics, especially when there are other verses that contradict that verse.

The Fall of Patriarchy: I Got Scammed by Caryn MacGrandle

I am a few months out of my second marriage. There will be no third. I know my task right now is to become self-sufficient.

Thanks to my second husband, I have valuable Project Management skills. He set up an S-Corporation when he was out of work in Illinois and handed it over to me when he found a salaried job. I gained needed self-confidence over the past eight years and figured out that I am good at Project Management.

Now I need to convince another company of that. Because I am not good at sales and no longer have my main client in my company and with my divorce, I need a steady income.

I thought I had found one.

I was reached out to by a supposedly Swiss company called HAND-Lease that leases and sells extremely large equipment from $25,000 up to $55 million. They had just established a Pennsylvania office and were now opening a Birmingham office. I was phone screened by a customer service employee who said if they were interested, the Human Resource department would reach out to me for a longer interview.

From Footbinding to Abortion and Beyond – This Has to Stop! by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

My husband, Marty, is a retired podiatrist. He worked in pockets of New York City that were poor and largely immigrant. When he first started his practice, he treated women from China whose feet had been bound. Despite being officially outlawed 1912, footbinding was still being practiced well into modern times. He saw these patients in the 1970s and 80s.

For those who don’t know what it is, young girls, as young as 3-5 would have the bones in their feet broken and then the feet bound with cloth strips. Every few years, the feet would be broken again until the desired result was created. To create that affect, the toes would be flattened against the bottom of the foot and arch would be so broken and damaged that the heel would curl back to the front of the foot. At each of the breakings the girl would need to learn to walk again. One can only imagine that pain of walking on foot bones that had been repeatedly broken. And here is an especially chilling part. The mothers would do it to their own daughters. I won’t go into further gruesome details because they can be easily looked up on the internet. It left the girls crippled for life.

Visions of the Great Mother by Mary Gelfand

During late summer a few years ago I had a vision. I know it was summer because it was hurricane season and there were several active storms in the Atlantic & Caribbean. Since I grew up in Florida and lived in New Orleans for many years, I have a lot of experience with hurricanes.

In this vision, I found myself seated at the side of the Great Mother Goddess looking down thru a portal at planet Earth. The Goddess looked at me and then turned back to the portal. She put a finger out and touched a place on the planet with a spark of light. Then She turned to me and said, “The energy must be discharged!” She repeated this multiple times and ultimately put her finger on planet Earth five times, each time touching a spot where a hurricane was active.

The energy must be discharged!

Three poems by Sara Wright

Spirits of the Forest

In Forest Presence

I listen,

leaves

and needles rustle

Voices

Hum inside

Hemlock bark

sounding

if only humans

would listen

Incantations

erupt beneath

the forest floor

wrapped

in a tapestry of threads

millions of miles

of white

cottony intentions

interevntions?

made manifest

by Raven and

Owl

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Who Is Jephthah’s Daughter? The Sacrifice of Women and Girls

Moderator’s Note: The was originally posted on January 20, 2014

Last week I reflected on Angela Yarber’s insightful essay and painting on Jephthah’s daughter. For those who did not read the earlier posts, the story of Jephthah’s daughter is found in the Hebrew Bible. Jephthah’s daughter was sacrificed by her father after he swore in the heat of battle that if his side won, he would sacrifice the first person he would see on returning home. Angela called us to reflect on who Jephthah’s daughter is in our time.

In my earlier midrash on the story, I invoked Daniel Cohen’s powerful retelling of the story of Iphigenia. Cohen concludes that Artemis told Agamemnon that his ships would sail only if he sacrificed his daughter not because she wanted him to do it—but because she hoped this challenge would induce him to realize that the costs of war outweigh any possible gain.

All these sexist movies turn me red by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

*Warning* – contains spoilers about the movie “Turning Red” as well as “Brave,” “inside Out,” and “Encanto.”

Imagine something with me for a moment. Imagine there is a movie about an adolescent boy who discovers that he has magic shapeshifting powers to become a fierce, powerful animal. The males in his family have had this power for generations because a deity granted the power to a male ancestor in order to help him protect his family from enemy invaders. The boy has to learn to control the amazing power and potential of this fierce warrior alter-ego. What’s the next part of the story?

Would he save his family from an evil ruler trying to harm them?

Would he save his town from an earthquake that almost destroys a stadium full of people?

Would he save his city from an evil power that wants to enslave the population?

Or… would he get in an argument with his dad about going out with his friends and end up doing intense emotional labor to heal intergenerational dysfunction in his wider family?

Do you think boys and men would ever, in a million years tolerate that last option? This boy superhero uses his superpower to… do emotional labor for his family. The end.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “MERMAID, GODDESS OF THE SEA”

This was originally posted on November 4, 2013

On the recent Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, I visited the Historical Museum in Heraklion where I saw a beautiful embroidered silk panel of a mermaid identified only as having come from Koustogerako, a village in western Crete. As it is unlikely that a man in a Cretan village would have been talented in embroidery, in this case “Anonymous” most definitely “was a woman.”

In this thread painting a mermaid surrounded by fish is holding the anchor of a ship in one hand and a fish in the other. In Greece the mermaid is the protectress of sailors. In a well-known legend, a mermaid said to be the sister of Alexander the Great, emerges from the sea in front of a ship during a storm and asks: “Is Alexander the Great still living?” If the sailors answer, “Yes, he lives and reigns,” the ship is saved.

WordPress Alert – UPDATED

We have been getting messages from people who have been frustrated with WordPress because there are times when WordPress makes it difficult to post a comment. We value comments and are frustrated as well when this happens.

UPDATE: the best way to comment (even with no WordPress account) is that after typing in your comment, a window will come up to fill in my name, email, etc.: fill in the two pieces that are required: 1) your email and 2) your name – and then just that should be enough for you to be able to submit your comment.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Aha! by Barbara Ardinger

The singing girl and her two new friends were walking very carefully along the edge of the yellow brick road. Outside of the bright sunlight, the bricks sere filthy and hardly yellow. This was thanks to a supply chain problem. The contractor had been forced to use inferior bricks to pave the road. The travelers were not impressed.

“How far are we from the capital city?” the girls wondered aloud as she gave the little dog in her arms a pat. ‘It’s certainly not over any rainbow I ever heard of.”

“It’s past the other side of the forest,” answered one of her new friends. He was a skinny fellow wearing ragged clothing, a farmer who had been cheated and chased away from his land. “I think we have to keep going through the forest,” he added.

“Assuming we don’t get lost and attacked by wild animals,” said the other man, obviously a prosperous citizen who had also suffered recent hardships.

“D’you guys think we can really get to see the Chairman?” the girl asked. “My uncle’s worried about his farm.”