General – Page 160 – Feminism and Religion

Seeking Moments of Beauty in a Crazy World by Mary Sharratt

Our world seems to get crazier by the day. We live increasingly accelerated lives. Our downtime seems to shrink by the second. If I don’t watch myself, I get mired in tunnel-vision, doggedly chasing deadline after deadline without taking any time out for myself or my loved ones. Add Trump, Brexit, the coronavirus, invasive social media, and climate change to the mix, and it gets darker still. Our democracies and even our privacy are up for grabs.

How can we hang on to any sense of inner peace amid all this chaos? Continue reading “Seeking Moments of Beauty in a Crazy World by Mary Sharratt”

Daughter of the Cranes by Sara Wright

When I see them
I enter the Dreaming.
In the background
a jagged coat of barren
reptilian mountains
frames bountiful bodies
standing on stilts as
undulating necks,
crimson crowns
beaded eyes
dive below the surface
in search of last year’s grain.
Each deliberate step is taken
in syncopated rhythm
with those of nearby neighbors
Each three toed talon
pierces still waters. Continue reading “Daughter of the Cranes by Sara Wright”

Today Is the Day by Carol P. Christ

I have been thinking of moving to Crete for almost two years. I signed the pre-contract for my new apartment in Heraklion on September 28 last year and anticipated signing the final contract in October. However, the owner did not submit his paperwork until the end of November, and little work gets done in Greek offices over the holidays. Moreover, the sitting tenant was doing just that. She been asked to move in July, and with an expired lease, she lost the formal eviction case in October. The realtor and the owner felt certain she would move before the holidays. She did not.

I spent December and January in a kind of hibernation. I knew I would eventually get the apartment, but I also knew I could do little to make it happen more quickly. I sat on my couch, stared out to sea, and waited. Soon it was mid-January and nothing had changed. We were still waiting for a paper from the Municipality of Heraklion and the tenant had not budged. Continue reading “Today Is the Day by Carol P. Christ”

Let’s Celebrate a God and a Goddess for February by Barbara Ardinger

Back around the turn of the century when I was writing Pagan Every Day, I did a lot of research. I had to. I had to write something for every day of the year, including leap year day and a second January 1, i.e., a year and a day. I used real books. I stacked them around the chair in front of my computer. I had to step over books. Step around books. Wind my way past books to other books that had somehow landed across the room. Just like nearly everybody else who writes for Feminism and Religion, I wrote and thought and deleted and wrote some more. (Y’all know how that goes.) We writers have always had interesting adventures with traditional publishers. That’s one reason self-publishing is so popular today: we can maintain more control over our work. Twenty years ago, when I modestly (hah!) submitted my year and a day of essays, the publisher said, “Oh, you wrote too much. We only want 300 words per day.” They hadn’t mentioned that before. So I began editing. I threw away nearly all my nifty daily epigraphs and edited every day down to (cross my heart) 301 words.

Who did I find for early February? A Greek god who had secrets. A Roman goddess who is special to me to this day.

Apollo

Continue reading “Let’s Celebrate a God and a Goddess for February by Barbara Ardinger”

Trauma Healing through Communal Dance by Laura Shannon

The last few weeks have been difficult for me. I was already feeling raw from the treatment of refugees in Greece, the upheaval of impending Brexit in the UK, the fires devasting Australia and the Amazon, and so many other tragedies going on in the world. Then on Christmas Day I was thrown completely off balance by someone shouting abuse inches from my face, in a space where I had believed myself safe.

Someone restrained the woman and I made my escape, but the close-up image of her furious screaming face – eyes bulging, spittle flying, chin thrust up, chest thrust out – stayed with me long after the incident.

Like a car accident or other unexpected shock, this scene played back in my memory, night and day. I could not sleep, could not concentrate; I woke with nightmares, burst into frequent tears, suffered a string of migraines, and felt consumed with anxiety and fear.

In the following weeks I tried hard to overcome the trauma and to stop the flashbacks replaying continually in my mind, using all the resources available to me. However, I only really found a cure once I came back to Athens and went with my husband to a night of traditional dance with live music.

Continue reading “Trauma Healing through Communal Dance by Laura Shannon”

Mis(sing)Understanding: Kobe, Pompeo, and a Paper Towel by Marcia Mount Shoop

Who knows when each of us first learns that sensation—the sensation of being misunderstood. My hunch is that it comes early on in our lives, maybe even before our brains are making narrative memory, maybe even before we have begun to understand much of anything about ourselves or the world. But it doesn’t take much for the seed to be planted in us that the world won’t always understand us.

My mom has long told me a story about me as a frustrated toddler trying to be understood. I was sitting in my high chair, the story goes, and I started saying “puppy touw.” My mom was not sure what I wanted, but I became more and more adamant, saying “puppy touw” over and over again.

She brought the dog over thinking I might mean I wanted the dog. She showed me all kinds of toys and nearby objects in an effort to understand and respond to my increasingly urgent request. I became more and more frustrated, kicking the high chair, moving my body in the chair, saying “puppy touw” louder and louder through tears. Continue reading “Mis(sing)Understanding: Kobe, Pompeo, and a Paper Towel by Marcia Mount Shoop”

Spiritual without a Tradition and Feminist to the Core! by Carol P. Christ

In “Who Owns the Sacred?” Eline Kieft, who was raised Protestant and considers nature and the ancestors her teachers, noted that those of us who have left the Christian tradition but who have not signed on to another tradition are often demeaned; she writes:

any form of spirituality outside the five major religions is considered as empty, eclectic, post-modern consumerist product that lacks meaning and substance because of its diluted, selective ‘picking’ of traditions from other times and contemporary contexts.

I have heard this criticism from feminists and non-feminists alike.

Since 9/11, Christian feminists have questioned the widespread assumption that Christianity is the only true or important religion. However, recognition of religious diversity among Christian feminists is frequently limited to the 3 so-called Abrahamic traditions. More rarely Buddhists and Hindus are included. In either case, religious diversity is defined in terms of the 5 so-called “great”—and patriarchal–religious traditions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Ironically (or not!) the recognition of religious diversity among feminists serves to underscore the notion that the only legitimate feminists in religion are those who are working to transform patriarchal religions. Continue reading “Spiritual without a Tradition and Feminist to the Core! by Carol P. Christ”

2020 Women’s March by Marie Cartier

Picture of author, Marie Cartier and her partner, Kimberly. — Photo of the author (left) and her wife Kimberly Esslinger

Here we are at the fourth now annual Women’s March. I have done a photo essay of the March every year for Feminism and Religion (FAR), the first two from the Los Angeles March, and the last two from Orange County.

I’m taking a break this month from the series “In These United States” poems I have been delivering to FAR (back with more poems next month) to showcase some of the activism, commitment, humor, and courage that showed up at the March I attended in Santa Ana in Orange County, California, January 18, 2020.

In this part of these United States the marchers chanted, danced, laughed, and were very serious. Santa Ana is a densely populated city where almost 62% of the population is Mexican. This evidenced itself in the March where for the first time I saw ballet folkloric by a company dressed in traditional folkloric costumes, in suffrage colors. Continue reading “2020 Women’s March by Marie Cartier”

Wolf – The Call of the Wild by Judith Shaw

Howling wolves on a winter’s night sets the human heart aflame with fear – their legends are terrifying. Yet there is another side to Wolf. Deeply relational by nature, wolves are highly intelligent animals, excellent hunters and devoted to family. Human connection to wolves dates back to at least 20,000 BC in Southern Europe, where cave paintings of wolves have been found.

Continue reading “Wolf – The Call of the Wild by Judith Shaw”

Born Again by Sara Wright

Picture of Sara Wright standing outside in nature “Let me sing to you about how people turn into other things.” (Ovid)

Years ago I placed my brother’s ashes in a shallow depression that I had dug near a granite fern and moss covered boulder. The brook flowed just a few feet away and at the last minute I scattered a few filaments over the shallow waters, returning them to the sea. A week later I planted a hazel nut tree nearby. A fossilized spiral ammonite marks my brother’s grave.

Thanks to the underground highway created out of millions of tree/plant roots, the extensive net of fungal hyphae and this communal system’s miraculous ability to exchange nutrients/minerals/sugar, my brother lives on as part of this forest…The gracefully spreading hazel and all the other trees (spruce, maple, balsam, hemlock, ash) that are scattered around this hallowed woodland grove have been nourished by the bones of one I loved.

Yet only recently have I been possessed by revelation. Continue reading “Born Again by Sara Wright”