General – Page 218 – Feminism and Religion

The Blue No Gaia Wants: Protecting the Sacred through our Lawns by Elisabeth Schilling

blue lawn If Gaia is a living body, why are we painting her blue? Whether it is public parks or residential lawns, when there is that special odor in the air, I know to look down and there it is, an endless dye job on the grass indicating treatment. My city is concrete and blue dye for miles. Furthermore, I have sales people knocking at my door monthly asking if I want to spray pesticide around the house to decimate wasps, ants and spiders.

Many religious texts encourage us to mindfully consider the earth. The Jain Acaranga sutra, for instance, says, “a wise [person] should not act sinfully toward plants” (I.1.5.7). One way we sin against the earth so casually is by these mindless manipulations of our lawns, if we have them. (Technically, I do not have a lawn, but my roommate does, and I try to protect it). I do not think most people think about researching what they allow into the earth. Continue reading “The Blue No Gaia Wants: Protecting the Sacred through our Lawns by Elisabeth Schilling”

A Mother’s Gifts by Dawn Morais Webster

Dawn Morais Webster, the Pope off to his summer palace, Castel Gandolfo. He tells the world he will now become just a “humble pilgrim.” Parvati is a gentle mother goddess. But as Kali, she also wields enormous power. The daughter of Himavan, the king of the Himalayas, consort of Lord Shiva, and mother of Ganesha, the Elephant-Headed Lord, Parvati is the embodiment of all the energy in the universe. Her seat is on a lion or a tiger. In the words of a hymn to this goddess, she is “the auspiciousness of all that is auspicious.”

Lakshmi, the consort of Sri Maha Vishnu is often depicted as a very beautiful woman, seated on a full-bloomed lotus, holding lotus buds in two of her hands, a pot of gold in the third. She is flanked by elephants, reflecting her royal status. Lakshmi, as the Goddess of Prosperity, is brilliant in red silk, gold and precious stones. She also offers peace and a sense of balance.

Mother’s Day provided good reason to remember these Hindu deities. They lent their names to the two cows who were milked daily to feed me in the first six months of my life in my grandparents’ home by the sea in Thiruvananthapuram—or Trivandrum, Kerala. I wrote those foreign place names for decades in application letters and immigration forms but it was more than five decades before I first returned to the place where I was born. Continue reading “A Mother’s Gifts by Dawn Morais Webster”

What Could ‘Masculinity’ Mean in 2017? by Meghana Bahar

There have been so many times
I have seen a man wanting to weep
but instead,
Beat his heart until it was unconscious.

— ‘Masculine’, Nayyirah Waheed

PART I of II

There have been many times when I have wondered whether the world has reached a peak in a broken kind of masculinity.

The notion that there is only one kind of masculinity deserving pedestalisation, or even just one kind of masculinity, has long been discarded in the enclaves I have access to as a grassroots activist and scholar. These are not secret societies that are password-protected. They are protected, of course, by communities that uphold principles of freedom, dignity, equality and justice. But anyone is welcome.

It remains to be seen whether everyone will come.

Six years ago, news broke out that sixty-six teenaged boys had been sent to a government-authorised “anti-gay” boot camp in the state of Terengganu, a rather conservative Islamic province in eastern Malaysia. Their offence? They were considered ‘effeminate’ by their custodian-teachers. The boys were sent to a week-long counselling camp to ‘correct’ their behaviour. Continue reading “What Could ‘Masculinity’ Mean in 2017? by Meghana Bahar”

Do All Religions Teach Love and Justice? Or Do Some Religions Teach Domination? by Carol P. Christ

Recently at a discussion of Goddess and God in the World, Judith Plaskow and I were asked if the dialogue across religious difference we embody and advocate in our book is a “liberal thing.” Can it, the questioner wondered, occur with those who do not have a liberal view of religion and religious meaning?

I answered that Judith and I identified two principles that made our dialogue possible. The first and most important is that we share the conviction that individuals and communities always interpret their texts and traditions from particular standpoints, deciding with aspects of text or tradition they will make central and which they will criticize or ignore.

For example, those who advocate Lev. 18:22’s injunction that “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman” (NRSV) generally expand its meaning to include female as well as male homosexuality. They ignore the fact that extending this text to a prohibition of lesbianism is an “interpretation” not found in the original Hebrew. At the same time, they ignore other provisions in the text–including that it condones slavery under certain conditions as the notorious letter to Dr. Laura “Why Can’t I Own a Canadian?” attests. Continue reading “Do All Religions Teach Love and Justice? Or Do Some Religions Teach Domination? by Carol P. Christ”

Recalling the Courage of Shamima Shaikh by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

If this be Madness

Shamima Shaikh’s name may be unfamiliar for you and many who are not deeply informed about Islam and gender issues in South Africa or who tend to identify Muslim women and/or activism for women’s rights in Islam with the Arab region. Why should you know about her? Because Shamima Shaikh was one of the most notable Muslim anti-apartheid activists and advocates for the rights of Muslim women in her country—a prominent feminist, journalist, radio producer, movement builder, trailblazer, and fearless activist.

This year—2017—marks the 20th anniversary of her death, and I think it’s a special occasion to recall her brave legacy, not only because twenty is a special number. In the context of violence against women in South Africa and worldwide—in particular the violence against and exclusion of Muslim women in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia—as well as the gendered Islamophobia that targets our sisters in Europe, claiming the courage and spirit of resistance of Shamima Shaikh as part of our ethos as women living in a patriarchal world that hates us is absolutely necessary. Continue reading “Recalling the Courage of Shamima Shaikh by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

The Mountain Mother: Reading the Language of the Goddess in the Symbols of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ

Before he told the story of how his people received the sacred pipe, Black Elk said:

So I know that it is a good thing I am going to do; and because no good thing can be done by any man alone, I will first make an offering and send a voice to the Spirit of the World, that it may help me to be true. See, I fill this sacred pipe with the bark of the red willow; but before we smoke it, you must see how it is made and what it means. These four ribbons hanging here on the stem are the four quarters of the universe. The black one is for the west where the thunder beings live to send us rain; the white one for the north, whence comes the great white cleansing wind; the red one for the east, whence springs the light and where the morning star lives to give men wisdom; the yellow for the south, whence come the summer and the power to grow.

But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle feather here is for that One, which is like a father, and also it is for the thoughts of men that should rise high as eagles do. Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? And this hide upon the mouthpiece here, which should be bison hide, is for the earth, from whence we came and at whose breast we suck as babies all our lives, along with all the animals and birds and trees and grasses. And because it means all this, and more than any man can understand, the pipe is holy. [italics added]

In this passage Black Elk illustrates the multivalency of symbols: the sacred pipe does not have a single meaning, but many meanings, in fact, more meanings than anyone can understand. Continue reading “The Mountain Mother: Reading the Language of the Goddess in the Symbols of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ”

Shapeshifting Goddesses by Judith Shaw

Magic, divine intervention, shapeshifting – what do these things offer the modern mind, concerned with time clocks, definitive proofs and skeptical disbelief? Yet to the ancients, shapeshifting was a well known tale, found in stories and mythologies across the world.

Continue reading “Shapeshifting Goddesses by Judith Shaw”

Beginning with Death on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ

Our first ritual on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete is a death ritual in which we honor the memory of those who have gone before us. Like so many things on the pilgrimage, the death ritual evolved. I did not consciously plan to begin with death. Rather, the death ritual inserted itself at the beginning of the tour. Now I understand that the timing is right.

As we begin our pilgrimage, seeking new insight about the meaning of our lives, about the meaning of life and death, we pause to remember those who have gone before us.

Before the ritual begins, I discuss the communal burials in round tombs of the ancient Cretans, sharing my belief that the purpose of their rituals was not to secure immortality or eternal life for the individual, but rather to affirm and ensure the regeneration of life in the community and in nature. I add that though I have no desire for personal life after death, I care deeply about the continued flourishing of life for human and other than human beings.

I like to keep rituals simple. First, we create an altar. Two stones mark the place. We decorate them with flowers and fruits from our Mother Earth and small images of the Goddess. Continue reading “Beginning with Death on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete by Carol P. Christ”

Sirens, Thunderstorms, and Bowling: The Divine on this Mother’s Day by Ivy Helman

untitled Let’s see if the following course of events makes sense. A few Wednesdays ago, I was thinking about possible topics for this post considering it would be Mother’s Day. In the midst of thought, the warning sirens in Prague began. They were only being tested but, nontheless, I immediately thought of tornados. You see tornados, as awful and devastating as they are, make me think of thunderstorms and lightning. I love a good thunderstorm, the louder the better.

A Wisconsin childhood supplies plenty of thunderstorms. I cannot tell you the number of times as I was growing up that I stood outside watching the sky turn into that distinctive greenish-purple and smelling the storm on the breeze. Nor could I count the umpteen times we gathered in the basement as the tornado sirens blared and the radio advised its listeners in no uncertain terms to seek shelter. Nor could I recall how many times I sat with my mom during more recent summers watching the storms come in or the lightning blaze across the sky like a spider’s web. We’ve been lucky. Never once did a tornado hit our neighborhood although a house or two has been hit by lightning. Continue reading “Sirens, Thunderstorms, and Bowling: The Divine on this Mother’s Day by Ivy Helman”

Shakespeare’s Sister Revisited: A Circle of Female Lineage by Mary Sharratt

Vanessa Bell’s painting of her sister, Virginia Woolf

What do groundbreaking 17th century poet, Aemilia Bassano Lanier, and 20th century feminist icon, Virginia Woolf, have in common? A lot actually.

In her 1929 essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf imagines the tragedy of Shakespeare’s brilliant sister, Judith, barred from the grammar school because of her sex and forced to hide her writing from her family. To escape a forced marriage to a man she hates, she runs away to London to seek her fortune in the theatre, only to end up pregnant, abandoned, and destitute. Out of despair, she kills herself. Continue reading “Shakespeare’s Sister Revisited: A Circle of Female Lineage by Mary Sharratt”