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Book Review: FLORENCE IN ECSTASY by Jessie Chaffee

FlorenceInEcstasy3DBook

Jessie Chaffee‘s Florence in Ecstasy is the most luminous debut novel I have read in a very long time. Imagine, if you will, a darker and more literary version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s popular spiritual seeker’s memoir, Eat Pray Love. This is not to diminish Gilbert’s memoir, which I loved, but Chaffee offers a much deeper dive into the dark night of a woman’s soul.

Hannah, a young American from Boston, goes to Florence, Italy to heal herself after her professional and personal life back home has disintegrated due to her anorexia. Surely, in life-loving Italy, where every meal is a celebration, Hannah can heal her disturbed relationship with food and her own body. Similarly, Eat Pray Love, with its luscious descriptions of Italian cuisine and Gilbert’s rejection of dieting in favor of buying a bigger pair of jeans, deals with body image issues and is often recommended reading for women and girls recovering from eating disorders.

But Chaffee’s novel, unlike Gilbert’s memoir, is no easy-going, feel-good read. Continue reading “Book Review: FLORENCE IN ECSTASY by Jessie Chaffee”

SHEELA-NA-GIG by Carol P. Christ

On a trip to Ireland several years ago, I was fortunate to have been able to see the Sheela-na-gigs in the National Museum of Dublin. Two of these Sheelas including the one removed from the Seir Kieran Church of County Offaly, pictured below, are currently on display. They stand at the doorway of a room dedicated to items from the medieval period and easily missed. As there was little interest in them and they are not in cases, I was able to silently commune without interruption.

Continue reading “SHEELA-NA-GIG by Carol P. Christ”

Honey: A Thousand Flowers by Mary Beth Moser

Today I am finishing the last bit of the honey I hand-carried home from my most recent trip to Trentino. Sun yellow in color, it is made from the nectar of mountain flowers. Its label tells its origin—di montagna, of the mountains, and its type — mille fiore, often translated as “wildflowers.” Literally, however, it means “a thousand flowers.”

The valley where my maternal grandmother was born, Val di Sole, is renowned for its honey. In Croviana, one of the villages in the valley, new honey is celebrated in July with a sagra, a communal food festival. There are more than a dozen different types of honey from Trentino, including apple, chestnut, and rhododendron. These are plants of place – nature’s gifts that appear in the folk stories and are present in everyday life. Continue reading “Honey: A Thousand Flowers by Mary Beth Moser”

Missing a Teachable Moment: The Purple Dress by Marilyn R. Freedman

Intelligent and impish eyes took in my approach, and the little girl moved away from the post office doors. But not before I saw her sweet face with round cheeks still full of baby fat squished against the glass. With slightly messy, curly blond hair and wearing a shiny, deep purple, ruffled dress-up dress, she looked pretty, happy, and confident. This was her world, wherever she was. When I smiled, though, she turned away, shy of a stranger.

I got into the long line with my kid and listened to the little girl’s dad discuss gift card values with her older brother. The boy named an amount, and the dad commented about how expensive it was. “What a great way to teach a little economics and finance,” I thought.

Continue reading “Missing a Teachable Moment: The Purple Dress by Marilyn R. Freedman”

A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier

Kim and I with our hosts and new family friends

I’ve known for years and years that on my wife’s, Kim, bucket list was to see a total eclipse of the sun. She began over a year ago researching weather conditions and making reservations, researching camera equipment, buying the special eclipse lens so that she could shoot the sun.

By the time we left on our road trip to visit first our tribe of sister family in the Midwest at an annual gathering, and then to visit various friends, she had four reservations for the eclipse viewing—all in different states. She patiently explained to me (again) that she would be checking weather conditions and “chasing” the eclipse if need be. I understood, because as I said, I’d heard about the eclipse for a while (lol). I knew we’d be making friends with the NASA weather page which I checked continuously for the last two weeks. I would put in the different locations where Kim had made reservations over six months ago, cities near the center line of totality: Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri…then there were cloud predictions in all of those states and it seemed she should have stayed on the west coast and gone to Oregon or Wyoming. Continue reading “A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier”

Moving Toward an End: The Role of the Faith Community in the Struggle to End Domestic Violence by Katie M. Deaver

I have used my last few posts here on Feminism and Religion to begin unpacking the three primary understandings of atonement theology, the feminist critiques of these understandings, and how the relationship between power and violence influences how Christian women view the atonement. This post will consider the role that faith communities are called to play in situations of domestic violence.

Personal faith often has a huge impact on the lives of survivors of violence. This impact, unfortunately, as can be seen in the other posts as well as in the comments on those posts, is not always a positive one. In her book, Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation, Flora A. Keshgegian envisions communities of faith as communities of remembrance. A community of remembrance does not ignore or suppress the negative experiences of its members but strives to enable us to embrace personal identity, form our faith, and to nurture hope in order to heal and transform after such experiences.

One question that my dissertation set out to answer was how we might begin the difficult work of moving our communities of faith in this direction. Sadly, the biggest difficulty seems to be the lack of awareness, or the downright denial, that domestic violence is an issue for the average faith community. So many congregation members assume that if their pastor is not talking about an issue then it must not be a problem in their particular community.

Continue reading “Moving Toward an End: The Role of the Faith Community in the Struggle to End Domestic Violence by Katie M. Deaver”

Corra, Celtic Serpent Goddess by Judith Shaw

judith shaw photo Even though snakes never inhabited Ireland, as in the rest of the ancient world both the serpent and the dragon were ancient symbols of life, fertility, wisdom and immortality for the Celts. Ancient Celtic ornamental work is entwined with serpents and dragons. The Celtic Knot can be seen as a never-ending serpent. A large stone with a carved serpent is found at the sacred cairn sites of Knowth. The megalithic structure of Brug na Bóinne (Newgrange) has multiple serpent-like spirals on the entrance stone.

In Scotland there is the earthen serpent at Glen Feochan, Loch Nell. The Pictish Aberlemno Serpent Stone is engraved with a serpent and other symbols. The torque collar, a symbol of kingship and status was created in the form of a hybrid horned dragon/snake. The serpent was connected to healing pools and springs and the Druids believed the serpent had healing powers together with a certain type of egg shaped stone called a “serpent’s egg.” Continue reading “Corra, Celtic Serpent Goddess by Judith Shaw”

In the Words of the First Poet and Historian: “I am” by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

These days I find it hard to write – I feel plagued with negativity, and the news and violence and overall hateful actions of others have weighed deeply on my soul. While I personally am ready to celebrate a milestone birthday, am another year closer to completing my Ph.D., witnessed the graduation of one daughter, experienced the independence of another, a milestone for my twins, as well as my father’s successful completing of another orbit around the sun after a year plagued with health issues – rather than joy, my heart is filled with pain – pain of the election, pain of the failure of our political system’s supposed checks and balances, pain of violence and bigotry like that enacted in Charlottesville, pain of terror attacks in England, Spain, Finland, France, etc. Where we ought to be united, we are divided. Thus, I write from a place of remembering – a place of strength – a place to say I count (as you count) – and I begin this blog in the voice of Enheduanna, where she becomes the first voice in history to reveal herself – her name, by simply stating – – “I AM.” Continue reading “In the Words of the First Poet and Historian: “I am” by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Talking Gender and Islam at the Grassroots by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

In my current trajectory linked to community development — via both activism and my professional field — I’ve learned that popular education is a very useful practice and methodology to decentralize all types of knowledge. Since I embraced Islam, part of my activity has focused on creating spaces for the production, discussion, and appropriation of religious knowledge for women at the grassroots. Religion is not separated from the daily life of believers, therefore, each of them carries knowledge that has been deliberately obliterated by hegemony.

The feminist hermeneutic of Islam is a paradigm that aims to provide Muslim women with skills and concepts that allow them to boost their agencies in their respective contexts, encouraging a transformation in the understanding of religious phenomena and its trajectory towards gender justice. For this transformation to be possible, knowledge must be accessible in language, methodology and location.

Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of liberation is a tool I consider to be critical and necessary for feminism, including Islamic feminism, at a time when debates about decolonization are very fashionable in academia. Freire’s methodology is democratizing because it allows, on one hand, to transfer knowledge from privileged circles to the margins and, on the other, to make visible the experiential knowledge produced in the periphery — to include them in the spectrum of what we understand and as such subvert, in this way, the dynamics of power, representation and discourses.

During my time in South Africa, I have engaged with popular education on topics related to Islam and Gender with Muslim women from the Cape Flats. These women have different backgrounds, races, life trajectories, and religious journeys. They exist in the geographic, cultural and epistemological margins of the social reality of Cape Town. Their experiences as Muslims do not appear in academic journals, nor are they even “noticed” by their highly androcentric communities of belonging.

For the past 7 months, I have met with them on a regular basis to talk about Gender and Islam. “Talk” is a methodological definition that means that we are placed in equal and interchangeable positions of teacher-student during our dialog — assuming than rather than learning something new, we are facilitating for each other a way to communicate things we already know. Muslim women of the Cape Flats know, indeed. But they have been told that they do not know by a system of privilege formed for the ulemas, for academia, or for the Islamic institutions. Continue reading “Talking Gender and Islam at the Grassroots by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

The Trouble with Boaz by Katey Zeh

The Trouble with Boaz (1)

I’ve always been troubled by the story of Boaz found in the Book of Ruth. While there are plenty of biblical narratives that horrify me–Hagar, Tamar, and other “texts of terror” as Phyllis Trible called them–the story of Boaz is uniquely problematic in how it has been interpreted and applied by some Christian traditions, particularly among evangelicals. What is so insidious about this biblical re-telling is how the relationship between Boaz, a wealthy landowner, and Ruth, a foreign widow, is idealized as some kind of romantic love story.

Ruth and Boaz social media meme

Waiting for your Boaz is a popular blogging platform among single white evangelical women who desire a husband. Their Facebook page alone has nearly 300,000 likes. For purchase on the main site is a book entitled 31 Days of Prayer for your Future Husband: Becoming a Wife Before the Wedding Day. The premise of Waiting for your Boaz is that if single women quit searching for a husband (i.e. dating) and pray for one instead, God will “write your love story” and like a matchmaker, will bring them one eventually.

While there are many troubling theological issues at play in this framework, for this particular piece I will focus on the cooption of the biblical narrative to uphold a worldview in which the fate of women is left to the whims of men and a male God.

In the biblical narrative Boaz is the distant relative of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law. When the women are widowed suddenly and thus left destitute, they return to Naomi’s homeland in Bethlehem. (Orpah, Naomi’s other daughter-in-law who is also a widow, remains in Moab.) With no other known male relatives available to help them, Boaz is the women’s only hope for sustenance. He permits Ruth to glean the leftover crops after his fields have been harvested and instructs the workers not to bother her while she gathers food. While I acknowledge that Boaz acts kindly–or at least neutrally–toward Ruth, we ought not forget the immense power dynamics at play: Boaz is a native, wealthy, land-owning man while Ruth is a foreign, widowed woman with no rights.

At no other point in the narrative is this difference in power more evident than when Naomi insists that Ruth put herself at even greater risk–again for their collective well-being–by offering herself sexually to a drunk Boaz in the hopes that doing so might result in their continued protection.

This is not a fairytale. This is a story of survival.

In the end Boaz does offer Ruth and thus Naomi his protection through marriage. For two widows with no rights whatsoever, this is the best possible outcome, but it comes at great cost: namely Ruth’s bodily safety and autonomy which are threatened not only by her being a foreign woman working in the field, but also by her own mother-in-law’s admonition that Ruth offer herself as sexual collateral.

Single women ought to be praying for this? I think not.

Ruth does not wait. She cannot wait. Like many women, both ancient and contemporary, she uses what little power she has to do what is necessary in order to stay alive at great risk to her personal safety. Instead of admiring Boaz and his benevolent paternalism, our focus ought to be on removing the restrictions and confronting the injustices that leave women like Ruth and Naomi in such desperate circumstances in the first place.

Katey Zeh, M.Div is a strategist, writer, and speaker who inspires communities to create a more just, compassionate world. She has written for outlets including Huffington Post, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, Response magazine, the Good Mother Project, the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, and the United Methodist News Service. She is the co-host of Kindreds, a podcast for soul sisters. Her book Women Rise Up will be published by the FAR Press in March of 2018. Find her on Twitter at @kateyzeh or on her website kateyzeh.com.