General – Page 198 – Feminism and Religion

On Guilt and G-d, the Parent by Ivy Helman.

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_o Sometimes, being overwhelmed with guilt makes one unable to act. Other times, guilt manipulates and attempts to control. It might offer a sense of responsibility and concern. More often than not, guilt comes bundled in small doses of should-haves and could-haves.

For example, when you feel guilty for skipping exercise and instead lay in front of the television binge-watching your new favorite show. It’s not the end of the world, but you really should have gone and exercised. Or, when you feel bad for getting into a fight with a friend and saying something mean when you could have done otherwise. In general, I think there is such a thing as a healthy amount of guilt which spurs right actions, sincere apologies, forgiveness and knowledge of the good.

Jewish tradition generally agrees with me that a measured amount of guilt is often quite helpful. Guilt instructs us in right and wrong and guides us to be more responsible, more mature individuals. Indeed, it even clues us into a better understanding of G-d. Continue reading “On Guilt and G-d, the Parent by Ivy Helman.”

A Short History of Maligned Women by Mary Sharratt

Women who stand out and dare to seize their power have been maligned throughout history. Even today many people are uncomfortable about the very idea of a powerful woman. Witness how Hillary Clinton was demonized in the 2016 presidential campaign. What other U.S. presidential candidate has been called “nasty” by their opponent or had their opponent literally looming over them during a live televised debate? Even women who would never dream of running for political office face every day misogyny and threats of violence for daring to speak out on the internet. It doesn’t matter what the woman has to say—the fact that she has spoken out at all has made her a target.

I certainly encountered the “such a nasty woman” phenomenon while researching Alma Schindler Mahler, the protagonist of my new novel Ecstasy. Born in Vienna in 1879, Alma Maria Schindler was an accomplished pianist and aspiring composer who gave up her own music as a condition for her marriage to the great composer, Gustav Mahler. Later, after a marital crisis, she returned to composing and published three collections of her songs. She was married to—or had affairs with—some of the greatest creative geniuses of her time, including Gustav Klimt, Walter Gropius, Oskar Kokoschka, and Franz Werfel. She was also a pioneer in the field we now call artistic management and her networking skills benefited the men she loved. But one would hardly know about her talents and gifts to read the biographies written about her.

Continue reading “A Short History of Maligned Women by Mary Sharratt”

Celebrating Pride: Honoring the Spiritualities of Queer Holy Women of Color by Angela Yarber

With rainbow colors erupting from even the big box stores, I find my super queer-feminist-self scratching my head at the way Pride has transformed into a capital enterprise. I mean, I’m pretty stoked that the cultural climate seems to be slightly more affirming of queer people, but as queer culture is commodified, I cannot help but think of what is being lost or forgotten. And I want to shout from the rooftops that the rich spiritual history of Pride rests firmly on the shoulders of queer women of color who have marched and meditated, prayed and protested long before rainbow Pride headbands were available at chain stores across the land. It is for this reason that, in honor of Pride Month, the Holy Women Icons Project (HWIP) has launched a 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat that celebrates seven different queer holy women of color.

HWIP’s 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat is an opportunity to subversively queer your spirituality, and for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate our spirituality without having to translate it through the lens of heteronormativity. Open to everyone, the Queer Spirituality Retreat features seven different queer women of color: Pauli Murray, Frida Kahlo, Perpetua and Felicity, the Shulamite, Marsha P Johnson, Guanyin, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Each retreat day takes about 20 minutes and includes an inspirational quote, an icon image, a reflective essay, a guided writing exercise, a ritual exercise, and a closing blessing. The most important part of the retreat is, of course, the revolutionary queer women who make it possible. So, allow me to briefly introduce you to seven queer women of color who should make us all proud…

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Four Worlds Poem by Sara Wright

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.

Continue reading “Four Worlds Poem by Sara Wright”

Toil and Trouble (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

When the Amazons land in the capital city, they find themselves standing on the wide lawn in front of the Golden Tower in which El Presidente lives and rules. And look—El Presidente is still talking. Not having noticed the disappearance of twenty-seven princess, he’s still strutting, still emphatically gesturing, still addressing the fifty-four handsome, charming princes, who make up what he considers to be his people. (His fan club?)

Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, adjusts her armor and walks across the sidewalk into the empty street. Her warriors follow her. “Now what?” she asks the air around her.

They hear a voice. “Greetings, Sisters! And be welcome! We haven’t met in many years. I’m glad to see you again.” Hippolyta looks a bit confused. “Don’t you remember Brunhilda?” the voice asks. Continue reading “Toil and Trouble (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger”

Religious Practice and Epistemic Justice by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

feeling-measured-on-faith

One of the topics that has captured my deep interest during the last year is Epistemic Justice – and its absence, epistemic injustice – a concept which I reflect on often, since it has become a backbone idea in the approach of my work, my activism, my diagnosis of the situation of women in the global south and my vision of the world in which I would like to live. These reflections that I share with you do not intend to articulate a strictly academic presentation. They are my “thinking aloud” and don´t pretend to be completely right nor to establish a truth; rather they express the progress of a personal searching.

I speak as a Muslim feminist who loves to read and write about Feminism and Islam, but is not an academic nor aspires to be recognized as such in this field, although she writes papers and offers lectures in her own capacity on that matters. I speak as a community educator and social entrepreneur, who believes in feminism and spirituality as liberation tools. Since I accepted Islam, I took the experience gained in my work for the political empowerment of grass roots women to nourish an activism in the field of religion and gender justice. Continue reading “Religious Practice and Epistemic Justice by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

My Grandmother is a Gangster… a Spiritual Gangster by Valentina Khan

My grandmother is a gangster… a spiritual gangster

I recently attended a funeral for a relative-in-law. The grassy patch at the cemetery was filled with many familiar faces as well as unfamiliar. My side of the family was asked to come. My father, mother and even teeny tiny little 4 foot 9 grandmother showed up. I emphasize her height because it has nothing to do with her stature… and this is where my story begins.

My grandmother aka “Mama Shamsey” is from my maternal side. She grew up in Tehran, Iran. She was a young bride to a handsome intellectual who was French educated but a deeply spiritual and passionately religious Iranian Shia Muslim. He truly believed people should never discuss politics or religion. He knew how to be open and compassionate with people of differing opinions than his. They married, had 5 children, my mother was the eldest. When she was just entering her tender teenage years, many of her peers were flocking to Europe to be educated in Germany or France. She however had the dream of going to school in America, so in the 70’s this family of 7 made the great migration over to America.

Continue reading “My Grandmother is a Gangster… a Spiritual Gangster by Valentina Khan”

Spiritual Ideas, Existential and Eastern, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Elisabeth Schilling

After my year of teaching high school students, I found a kinship with them in their frustrations, longing, apathy, hopelessness, and hope. Fortunately, we studied together Jean Paul Sartre, whom I want to get to know more intimately, but we, the teens and myself, could take the spiritual answer to our questions about the meaning of life (is there one? What is it?): The meaning of life is to give it meaning.

I am not sure about their generation, but adolescence for me, in mine, was about discovering, not necessarily creating. Of course, now I think it is a little of both.

Sometimes I wonder if there is also a lesson. Being an academic, perhaps I love learning and teaching. I demonstrate my love as Jonathan Livingston Seagull does, by offering to others, perhaps a specific community of others, those who have chosen or must be in a state of learning (easily found in institutions of high school and college), the truths I have gathered (59). Of course ‘truth’ is a word that tastes a bit tannic, for it needs to be rolled around by the tongue a bit to be cleansed; perhaps to mitigate its toxic potential, we can never consume it undigested, but must gestate it and transform it within our warm bodies, just at the cliff, before we allow it to permeate our organs in a chemical structure that serves us.

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Meeting my Disr by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie, D.Min. Who are the Dsir?

Freyja, known as “Ancestor Spirit”, is viewed as the timeless, self-renewing energy in the universe. She witnesses and shapes the direction of creation and undoing. She is not the originating, creating Goddess, but rather a conduit for energy and life. Women who learn Seidr become like her, living conduits. Continue reading “Meeting my Disr by Deanne Quarrie”

Long Beach, California – 2018 Pride! by Marie Cartier

Photos by the author unless otherwise indicated

Last year I published a photo essay with pictures of Long Beach, CA’s Pride week-end. You can see last year’s photo essay here. I also published a photo essay of the Los Angeles Resist March from last year here.

It feels more important than ever to re-member/ re-attach ourselves to the normality of resistance, freedom, solidarity, courage and joy. I hope the pictures here help you FAR family to re-member your activist selves and re-invigorate them if they are in need of it. I know mine was before the past week-end. Here are photos from the Long Beach Dyke March on Friday night, and the Long Beach Gay Pride parade on Sunday morning.

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