A horizon belching sooty smoke pollutes once pure air pressing invisible particles, ozone into granite – lichen covered mountains – plant/animal lungs are coated in filth just as ours are. Death hangs over a leaden sky, the sweet scent of moisture is absent. Tomorrow’s bitter orange sunrise signals what many still refuse to believe: The Earth is on Fire. Those of us capable of Love – Animals, plants, Humans, who suffer, those who fought for justice continue to grieve in a Silence impossible to break. Change, if it comes at all will come too late. Humans have had 40 years to prepare… The age of the Anthropocene will not survive a species gone insane.
The move to Portugal all but forced me to heal my relationship with time and productivity, to create a life that was sustainable and nurturing.
Hanging out in Obidos, the closest town to my village. Photo by Erika Mailman.
One year ago, I published my essay, The Grace of Letting Things End, about my bittersweet experience of leaving England in the wake of Brexit for a new life in Portugal.
One year later, my life in Portugal still feels radically new.
Time passes differently in Portugal. I set my intention, from the outset, to embrace this move as an opportunity to slow down and live a more authentic life.
My day-to-day life has irrevocably changed.
I’ve gone from being a livery yard customer in England, with all the drama and conflict this sometimes entailed, to becoming an independent small holder with two horses on my property to care for all by myself. Practically, this has translated into a lot more work, but also a lot more peace.
The ponies decided to help with the lawn mowing
I’ve also been devoting considerable time and energy into learning Portuguese. My husband and I have been taking classes once or twice a week for nearly a year now and are making slow but steady progress.
But the most deep-seated change has been to my whole relationship to work and life. In the UK, I led a very productivity-centered life, existing from deadline to deadline with barely any time to breathe in between. I often felt too busy and wrapped up in my projects to meet friends for lunch.
For years I have struggled to heal my dysfunctional relationship with time management, embracing lifehack after lifehack. I’ve all but abandoned social media. I’ve done my utmost to milk every single hour of the day in order to become more productive. This pattern led to disillusionment and epic burn out, something more and more women are facing, particularly those who balance the demands of their careers with childcare and other care-taking duties.
Even writers and artists can fall down the hole of the Cult of Productivity, taking the creative process, which is at its essence slow and organic, and trying to force it into an industrial process with regular, reliable yields that are judged on how well they can be monetized. Even the refuge of spirituality can be compromised if it’s just another task on a never-ending to-do list.
Thus, despite my official intention to slow down, I found myself trying doggedly to replicate my old hectic, tunnel-vision working schedule in Portugal only to discover that it just didn’t work here. I hit a brick wall. Because I couldn’t sustain the same level of busyness AND care for two horses AND learn a challenging new language AND keep my initial intention of slowing down and enjoying the life I moved here to experience.
Something had to give. The move to Portugal all but forced me to heal my relationship with time and productivity, to create a life that was sustainable and nurturing. No lifehack could help me anymore, because I’d already given up television. I don’t even watch Netflix.
We hear a lot about the Slow Living Movement, but actually slowing down involves so much more than decluttering your closet or posting pictures of photogenic hipsters in hammocks on Instagram.
Moving to Portugal forced me to slow down. Because life is slow here. It’s no accident that the Slow Food Movement had its birth in Italy, another slow country in southern Europe. Food is also big in Portugal. In fact, I like to joke that LUNCH is the national religion. No matter how busy or important you think you are, the whole world stops for lunch. Shops close. People pour out of offices and go to restaurants for beautiful, affordable meals. Proper, cooked meals, mind you. Not a sandwich or salad to be inhaled at speed. To say you are too busy to meet your friends for lunch in Portugal would be sacrilege. Even in the height of the pandemic when all the restaurants were closed, people went home for lunch and ate with their families.
Converting my visiting writer friend Erika Mailman to the religion of LUNCH!
Any culture that prioritizes good food also prioritizes human relationships. My social life here is unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere in the world. I’ve met wonderful Portuguese people, such as our local Priestess, Luiza Frazao, as well as new friends from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Columbia, the Netherlands, Israel, Russia, Germany, Spain, Poland, Hong Kong, and Belgium. My husband and I have made so many friends in our village. We can walk to each other’s houses and invite each other for dinner or go on long walks together. The other foreigners who move to Portugal have made the conscious decision to make time for friendship, not just shove it into a twenty minute “let’s meet for coffee” slot. I haven’t had this much fun since I was a student.
Other things are slow here, too. The post office can be painfully slow. My New Yorker subscription has gone AWOL and I’ve resigned myself to reading the digital version. Plumbers and technicians come when they come. Just when you think they’ve forsaken you, they manifest at your door. But then again neighbors I’ve never met before also show up unexpectedly with gifts of apples for the horses. One day an old man pulled his tractor up in front of our house and presented me with two sapling banana trees.
What I’ve discovered is if I give up any notion of trying to control the clock or manage time, it becomes more expansive. When I’m with my horses or laughing with friends, time disappears and I’m living in an eternal now. The same is true when I’m deep in my writing flow or trying to speak my best Portuguese to thank my neighbor for the banana trees. In a rich and authentic life, there is time for everything.
Life Balance is a feminist issue, because too many women have been brainwashed by the Cult of Productivity for far too long and this has kept too many of us chained to a patriarchal machine that eats us up and spits us out when we’re too broken to go on doing anymore. Let’s rebel and meet our sisters for lunch!
Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. Her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, is published by Mariner.Her new novelRevelations, about the mystical pilgrim Margery Kempe and her friendship with Julian of Norwich, is now available wherever books and ebooks are sold. Visit her website.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been looking for home—home being both a beautiful, comfortable, geographic space as well as a peaceful state of mind/being. For most of my life, I’ve “made do,” settling for wherever or whatever appeared before me. I thought that was “good” and selfless behavior—shrinking my desires and wants to a size that made other people happy. For women in our patriarchal society, shrinkage is a highly-prized quality, useful not just as a survival skill, but as a way of being in the world that allows things to run smoothly for somebody other than yourself.
Recently, I’ve been trying to find some kind of balance while slogging through several major changes in my life that include loss of family, friends, and job. Part of that balancing act involves looking for an esthetically-pleasing shelter/home in a place surrounded with natural beauty. In addition, I would like to live in community with people who are adventurous, open to new ideas, and kind.
Once again, I find myself writing about a man in power getting caught abusing women. It turns my stomach. The ink is barely dry on my blogpost about Bill Cosby. This time it’s Andrew Cuomo, the governor of my state, New York.
The title for this blogpost came from a comment made by news anchor, Nicolle Wallace as she was hosting a discussion of men behaving badly. The history of holding powerful men to account is a slim one at best. When I think about the Bill Cosby case, I realize that the laws are working as they were designed to – to protect men. We still have an ex-President who hasn’t been called to account for anything. We have two Supreme Court justices who are credibly accused of abuse. And they have achieved the pinnacles of power, for life. There are just too many instances of abusers rising to power for it be accidental.
And if by some happenstance, a powerful man is called to account, the work and the time involved are staggering. As I write this, New Yorkers are discussing how to remove Andrew Cuomo from the governorship. Whether he is impeached or resigns, that is just baseline accountability. There is also talk about criminal prosecution. Go Letitia James (the NY Attorney General)! Still, I will believe that when I see it. Cuomo has been our governor for over 10 years. Those of us living in New York, have long been aware that Cuomo isn’t just a bully but a long-time abuser. But then so were Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. In fact, their crimes went on so long that statues of limitations ran out in many cases.
When I planted my cedar in the garden it seemed like an odd place – Why bury her amongst a plethora of summer flowers unless I feared she’d disappear? I was afraid to name her – Guardian. When delicate fronds dulled, turned brown I despaired.
Weeks passed. I considered pulling her up by the roots. ‘Replace her’, an unpleasant voice nagged. But another chimed in. ‘Give her time; be patient. Wait and see.’
I listened to the Voice of Patience knowing how much I needed to learn.
All winter I walked by brushing ice crystals from frozen lacy fingers. When April came the absence of rain unraveled the spring.
When I was 17, I left the US to live and study in Europe for a year, with Womanspirit Rising crammed into my backpack. This book, edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, gave me the solid ground of a feminist worldview which honoured women, the body, and the earth. My favourite chapter was the last one: Carol’s foundational essay ‘Why Women Need the Goddess’, where she writes, ‘The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power’. These words, indeed that whole essay, became the pole star for my journey through the world, helping me name what was missing in both the academic world and the world of dance.
This post is dedicated to Carol P. Christ. I knew her first as my professor and then my friend for over 15 years. May her memory be a blessing.
This week’s Torah portion is Shofetim (also spelled Shoftim), or Deutoronomy 16:18-21:9. I have written about this parshah before. In that post from August of 2018, I reflect on how the patriarchal elements of the portion should not detract from its larger concern for justice, compassion, and peace. Yet, there is more to the parshah. In fact, I have recently begun exploring Judaism’s connection to all things magical, and interestingly enough, this parshah fits right into my recent inquiries. Let me share with you some of what I have learned as it relates to this parshah.
Where Shofetim and magic meet is idolatry. There are three instances in Shofetim where idolatry is condemned, punished by stoning to death. All three of these prohibitions involve polytheism, either directly worshiping other deities or participating in practices associated with the worship of those deities. What are they?
When I was about forty years old I discovered a clay deposit on a beach that I visited frequently. Intrigued, I sat down and began working with the river’s gift. I remember my astonishment when a beaked bird – woman emerged out of the clump of damp earth. I could feel a surge of fire pulsing through my body so I took the figure home and placed it on my bedside table, hoping to discern its message.
Shortly thereafter I discovered the work of Marija Gimbutas in the book The Language of the Goddess. There were a number of beaked goddesses pictured in this volume, some uncannily similar to mine. Had I tapped into the world of the ancient bird goddesses? I believed so. Although I had no idea what this might mean these images of Marija’s captured my imagination and kept me questioning. It wasn’t long before I also dreamed other bird goddess images and rendered each of them in clay…
I put the pendulum away. I went into Charles’s bedroom and watched TV with him.
But I was addicted. First thing Saturday morning—back to the pendulum. We want you as our earth slave. I prayed over my paper Ouija Board. I cupped the crystal pendulum in my hands and prayed again. I visualized white light on the paper, around the pendulum, around my hands, around my pen and notebook, around my whole body, filling my living room. White light everywhere. I called upon angels and spirit guides to protect me.
It’s been over five years since I wrote the first part of this topic. A lot has happened since then; I have changed for the better or so I would like to believe, but I guess the real question is – have I changed my mind, my perspective on forgiveness? The answer is simple: No.
Why then did I even bother to write this post, you may ask. I guess I have gotten a better, deeper insight into why I continue to feel the way I did five years ago. Of course, even now I hear what philosophers have to say, and can understand, often even agree with, their arguments in favour of forgiveness: that forgiveness is not about setting someone else free; it is about setting yourself free.
Feminism and Religion 