Barbara Ardinger (one blogger here – watch for her “twist” on this in January!) and I were discussing that an explanation of the pagan year and our Sabbats might be in order. Sometimes when we are immersed in our own spiritual practice, we forget that those who read what we have written may not have a clear understanding of what forms the basis of the holy days we speak of in our articles. These holidays are called Sabbats. The word sabbat is of obscure etymology but was understood in the Middle Ages to mean a gathering of witches and heretics. The word comes from the Hebrew Shabbath meaning a day of rest. Christians use the word Sabbath for Sunday, their traditional day of worship. It is interesting to note this was not a term originally coined by pagans, themselves. It has been borrowed or adopted for use today.
Pagans see the journey traveled in a year or a lifetime as kind of wheel. It is based on the earth’s journey around the sun. One rotation equals one year. We call it the Wheel of the Year. Since the origins of most of the traditions practiced by pagans in this country come from the Northern Hemisphere, the turning of the wheel is based on the Earth’s travel around the sun and the impact that is felt in the Northern Hemisphere. It would be exactly the opposite for those in the Southern Hemisphere. Continue reading “The Pagan Wheel of the Year by Deanne Quarrie”
While I sit and write this post, Christmas celebrations are concluded and I prepare, with the rest of the world, to embark on a new year; a year with my idealistic hopes and want for a better future for humanity. So for New Year’s I am taking out my golden lamp and making three big wishes: peace, kindness, and dialogue in the Catholic Church.
Peace
“True peace is not a balancing of opposing forces. It’s not a lovely façade which conceals conflicts and divisions…. peace calls for daily commitment.” – Pope Francis
Peace transcends governments and countries. Peace should be a daily commitment that each one of us lives every day and practiced in each of our relationships. Looking forward to a new year, I hope to put this into practice and we will see a shift in politics and attitudes that reflect an ideal of peace and reconciliation – not just nationally, but communally.
With peace also comes reconciliation. Fighting takes too much energy. Making a point to reconcile with that relative or friend that you had a falling out with is a goal that has the potential to bear fruit and be restorative.
Kindness
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain
With peace and reconciliation comes kindness. This wish is a large request and one that the Pope calls us to embrace. A kindness is required that reaches the poor and oppressed, that reaches non-Catholics including atheists, and, that touches every race, class, and orientation. We do not have the right to judge – a sentiment that the Pope continues to reiterate.
According to Julia Baird, “even scientists are now touting the physical and psychological benefits of kindness, compassion, and selflessness. Multiple studies now show: a single act of kindness can trigger dozens more … and repetitive acts of kindness can make people happier, and less depressed.” This is not a new revelation, but a reminder of the benefits of kindness – a reminder we need to carry into the New Year.
We should, however, remember help the homeless, the children, and the oppressed. This group of people is often ignored the news media, but lack of attention to a problem does not diminish it. According to the Pope, scandals are the news of today, but the children without food are not news worthy. According to Pope Francis, we should not “interfere in the lives of others” in a way that is malicious, like gossiping or being boastful. This behavior brings hurt, bitterness and envy. Kindness is necessary for a better future for all of humanity.
Dialogue with the Catholic Church
“Fifty years ago, Vatican II spoke of communications. Let us listen to, dialogue with, and bring Christ all those we encounter in life.” – Pope Francis
Let us not focus on rituals and rules in the Church; rather, we need to focus on the people of the Church. People,
after all, make up the Church – not brick and mortar. Because of this, we need to focus on dialogue – a dialogue with each other, regardless of belief or life choices. This dialogue should be rooted in a positive attitude and carried out with love and humility. It should include a focus that reaches out to facilitate peace. This dialogue should also include the discussion of women’s roles in the Church. There are so many things to discuss. The Church is a human church. With the invitation to dialogue and re-address so many of the untouched or misinterpreted teachings of Vatican II, might we move forward and rebuild this Catholic Church on the shoulders of one who served the poor, loved everyone, and gave of himself?
What are your wishes for the new year? I would love to hear from you.
From my family to yours, may you have a peace-filled, prosperous, and delightful 2014.
Michele Stopera Freyhauf: Doctoral Student in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and a Member of the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University as well as an Instructor at John Carroll University’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Adjunct Professor in Religious Studies at Ursuline College and the University of Mount Union. Michele has an M. A. in Theology and Religious Studies from John Carroll University, and did post-graduate work at the University of Akron in the area of History of Religion, Women, and Sexuality. She is also a Member-at-Large on the Student Advisory Board for the Society of Biblical Literature and the student representative on the Board for Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society (EGLBS). Michele is a feminist scholar, activist, and author of several articles including “Hagia Sophia: Political and Religious Symbolism in Stones and Spolia” and lectured during the Commission for the Status of Women at the United Nations (2013). Michele can be followed on Twitter @msfreyhauf and @biblicalfem. Her website can be accessed here and is visible on other social media sites like LinkedIn and Google+
This year I want to resolve to help more and worry less.
This is the number one thing I worry about most right now:
Children and hunger.
Right now in the United States approximately 20-30% of children go to bed hungry. Twenty percent or more of the child population in 37 states and D.C. live in what are called “food insecure households.” New Mexico (30.6%) and the District of Columbia (30.0%) have the highest rates where children live without consistent access to food.
How often do we say “I’m starving?” What we mean is we are hungry. It’s true some of us don’t take care of ourselves all that well and maybe we realize—God, it’s dinner time and I didn’t eat all day—I need to resolve to eat better throughout the day. I totally agree with that resolution.
At the same time—we are not starving. I’m going out on a limb here and saying most of you reading this blog are not starving. (However, and this is something I worry about—many of you might be anorexic…and starving, most definitely—which would be another column.)
Poverty is the principle cause of hunger. Children who are malnourished lose about 160 days of illness a year. That’s almost five months! How are you going to get an education and go to school if you are missing almost 5 months of it?
Malnutrition can also stunt your growth. Stunted growth because of malnutrition affects almost one third of children in developing countries.
In many of these cases, this story begins with a malnourished mother. In many developing countries where the mother has not had adequate nutrition…the baby is born with stunted growth and at risk for among other things blindness and premature death.
Here’s what I worry about:
We have enough food to feed everybody. And we aren’t doing it.
The hungry in the world total 870 million people. That number is equivalent to the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Where are the hungry people? Mostly in Asia and Africa: east, central and southern Africa. However, the share of the hungry in urban areas is rising.
No one want to think about images of starving children…especially after Christmas or whatever variant of winter holiday you are celebrating. What we might be worrying about at this time is how much we actually did eat/indulged in over the holidays.
Be that as it may. Children are starving. Children go to bed hungry in every city in the United States every night. So, although this is a time of year when many among us worry about over-indulging in food, it is also the time that a quarter to a third of the population feels want most keenly, to quote a line from A Christmas Carol, when the men come to see Scrooge and try to get him to give to the poor. And he responds, “Are there no workhouses?”
There is a quiz on the Feeding America site to test your knowledge about hunger. You can take it here:
I’ll give you a few of the answers—1 in 6 Americans are hungry. Hunger is in homes where there is at least one working adult (almost 40% of them); and that same percentage is also true for hungry families who have folks in them who have a college education (almost 40%)—but they are still going to bed hungry. Among other things, hunger means that hungry children will not perform as well in school as those who are fed. And also hunger exists just as much in people with homes as in those who are homeless.
In the parable of the loaves and the fishes, Jesus says (John 6:1-14) don’t waste anything. Gather everything up. He feeds 5,000 people with the five barley loaves and two fishes that a small boy in the crowd has. But many folks forget that Jesus did not just perform the miracle that generated enough food for those 5,000 present. He also gathered up all that was left over—twelve baskets worth “so that nothing would be wasted.”
Why do we have enough and we are wasting so much? Why are children going to bed hungry? Why is there a surplus that is not being gathered up and distributed?
I don’t have the answers to really much of this–just my questions and my worries. However, many food kitchens for the homeless and those in need name themselves after this parable. They are not questioning the miracle or pondering the answers. They are practicing faith by works. There is one in San Jose, CA, The Loaves and Fishes Kitchen.
Also, when we talk about those who are hungry, and I have been talking about children here—there is another thing I worry about—the elderly and hunger. In my home state of California—47% of the elderly cannot afford basic needs. That is almost half of the population of the elderly in California!
The Loaves and Fishes Kitchen is the only provider of hot food for low income and homeless people in eastern Santa Clara/ San Jose, CA area. They describe their mission as one of providing some sense of “food security” to needy people /families. Food security—I have never heard of hunger and its abatement as not just as eating but as providing “food security,” before doing some basic research for this blog. I’m sure many of us have heard of the phrase, “worrying where the next meal will come from,” but food security means not just getting the next meal and feeling full. Food security means stopping having to worry about where the next meal will come from.
In Los Angeles where I live according to a recent Los Angeles Times article—there has been no let up in “food insecurity.” In fact, things are getting worse. According to this article, many folks have to decide between eating and paying rent, or eating and getting medicine.
Almost ten percent of Californians are out of work. This means more folks are hungry. Another worry: while this is happening house Republicans want to slash the food stamp budget by another 40 billion over the next decade “to prove fiscal responsibility.” The myth of the American Dream—where if you just work hard enough you will be OK, is what fuels the myth that cutting food programs, public welfare money– helps people “work harder.” When in fact, there are no jobs; people are paid less for working more—and the wealth in the country is owned by the elusive 1%.
There’s a great blog that recently went viral by a woman, Linda Tirado. She talks about the decisions that poor people make because they are the best decisions they can make then. I understand a lot of them because I was brought up lower middle class. If you looked away from your hamburger in my house one of the many siblings might snatch it off your plate. We did not have excess protein. However, I was not starving. I ate. Did we always eat healthy? No. But we ate.
Ms. Tirado’s piece helps us understand why slashing the budget that provides some relief to those on subsistence incomes, many living in motels with no stove, and working two jobs already…is not going to help those folks buck up and work harder. The poor are already some of the hardest working Americans there are, and some of the hardest working citizens of the world in any country.
Although there are many other things I worry about, such as:
–the torture of animals and that I still eat meat.
–The torture of dairy farm animals and that I still eat cheese and drink milk and have a daily cappuccino.
–I worry about the pollution of the ocean and that we, humans, represent such a small part of Earth—we are less than 29% of earth and the ocean in 71% of it and we’re screwing up the ocean. It is a variant of the 1% amassing the resources and hurting the 99% on a horrifically magnified scale.
Yes, there are many other things I worry about. I could go on here and talk about all the things I worry about. Sometimes I lie in bed and I can’t help thinking—somewhere a child is being hurt, or starving, a woman is being beaten. This might be happening somewhere close to me…maybe within walking distance. Somewhere in the great cities I have lived in…somewhere someone is almost always being hurt…and it is often a child.
I’m not sure if other folks worry like this. I know I do. And through the course of my life I have done work in various communities—social justice work that hopes to address and change these worries.
I could add to this list of current worries.
But, as I said right now I am very concerned with children and hunger—20 to 30% of American children going to bed hungry. And that is not even addressing the majority of the hungry in the world which do not even live in the U.S.
Children are dying, and their growth being stunted. Perhaps also on a small side note, because I am a teacher I am really concerned about the absolute unfairness of going to school with others who are well-fed when you are not and having to compete for the same grades. It worries me. As a professor who just finished grading over 200 finals—if I knew that some of these students were finishing their final work without enough food to fuel them, would I grade grade them differently? Should I? And maybe more importantly—should I know that they are hungry? Doesn’t it seem grossly unfair to apply the same grade to those who are hungry as to those who are well fed?
This blog does not mean that I could not list so many things I am also truly grateful for. I am—truly grateful. I had a book published this year. My wife and I performed an amazing balancing act of loans in order to purchase our first home. I am so grateful for this forum, this feminism and religion blog and the women who maintain it.
Yes, there are wonderful things in the world. Yes, it is a wonderful life. Or it can be. But, just as in the movie a wonderful life does not happen when people are hungry, when others want more than their share. What is our fair share? And how is it corporations become more important than the people who make them up? This is so much “food” for thought.
But, today I am writing about actual food. Not food for thought. I am thinking about resolutions, and I wanted to share mine. Children and hunger. I can’t resolve to stop worrying, but I can resolve to give money to the local mission (for me that is most likely to Catholic Charities or the Long Beach Mission, which I give to occasionally/regularly—but which I want to give to just regularly and on a schedule. There is also a food pantry at St. Luke’s in Long Beach that I will donate to with either time or money or both.)
I don’t know how much I’ll give—if it will be every month, four times a year or something else; if I will go work at the food bank or not. I want to do all of those things and I am realistic to admit I may not do them all but I will do something, in terms of a workable resolution by the first of the year.
I resolve to stop worrying about children and hunger so much. It doesn’t put food in a child’s belly—my worry. Faith by works.
I resolve to pick up the loaves and fishes of my life and work whatever miracle I can with them.
And you…what are your resolutions/ revolutions?
Marie Cartieris a teacher, poet, writer, healer, artist, and scholar. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of New Hampshire; an MA in English/Poetry from Colorado State University; an MFA in Theatre Arts (Playwriting) from UCLA; an MFA in Film and TV (Screenwriting) from UCLA; and an MFA in Visual Art (Painting/Sculpture) from Claremont Graduate University. She is also a first degree black belt in karate, Shorin-Ryu Shi-Do-Kan Kobayashi style. Ms. Cartier has a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University.
As a Catholic, a feminist, and the grown-up version of my third grade self who dreamed of being a priest (and eventually Pope), I am simultaneously elated and deflated by the promise of Pope Francis. His bold criticisms of capitalism and inequality are breathtaking.
Yet, much like the eager waiting that marks the season of Advent, I (naively) hold my breath awaiting the papal inclusion of women on the altar — not merely as servants — but as leaders and interpreters of scripture.
Whenever women’s ordination is raised, the Church trots out the dusty and inadequate argument that men are priests because Jesus was a man. This seemingly irrefutable based-on-biology conclusion is really a simple argument based on a difference of body parts. This ideal — something I’ve labeled the St. Peter Principle — suggests that our penislessness means that women (by natural law, of course) are to be denied priesthood. Continue reading “Blessed is the Womb By Dawn DiPrince”
Jesus loved sinners and Jesus would rather be dancing with me in West Hollywood on a Friday night than lugging through a swamp luring ducks into a trap with a duck caller made by a clan who think that my sexual actions are similar to that of an individual having sex with an animal.
To be able to walk down the street holding the hand of the one you love is a great feeling and an action that some of us aren’t able to perform without fear.
A line has been drawn in the sand between those who support gay rights and those who do not. While some call it being on the “right side of history,” I simply now refer to it as not sounding and looking like a bigot in the halls of history and in the various books, Facebook posts, and Tweets that our children will one day read. Continue reading “Yes, You’re a Homophobe by John Erickson”
A link to a video of a European Hooded Crow sliding down a snow-covered rooftop on a mayonnaise-lid sled appeared on my Facebook timeline a few days ago. For me this crow expresses the “spirit of the season” as aptly as anything I can think of. She brings a smile to my face on a grey and cold morning. She makes me want to climb up on the rooftop and slide down with her. She reminds me that we humans are not alone–we share the world with a vast multitude of other intelligent creatures. She tells me that there is nothing more sacred than the joy of life.
The ancient Cretans believed that the capacity to enjoy life was not limited to human beings–they believed that animals enjoy life as much as we do, and they expressed this sensibility in their art. They also celebrated birds because their arrival in spring announces the beginning of the growing season. This early pot in the shape of a bird or duck opening its mouth to–as we kids used to say–“drink the rain” cannot help but evoke a smile. Continue reading “Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy by Carol P. Christ”
In the Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice, usually December 21, heralds both the time of deepest darkness and the beginning of the return to light. It is a liminal day offering a transformation from darkness to light.
In the mid-latitudes in the ten days after the winter solstice the hours of sunlight increase by only a few seconds up to a minute or so. The world slows down allowing a time to relish the quiet of long nights and the inspiration of winter dreams.
It matters that he consistently affirmed, empowered, and befriended those who were the outcast, marginalized, oppressed, and rejected of his day—such as Samaritans and women.
A firestorm has been set off recently concerning the self-assured observations by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that Santa Claus is white and so too is Jesus. These comments, which were in defiant response to a Slate article “Santa Claus Should Not Be A White Man Any More,” by Alisha Harris, have been spoofed by late night talk shows and satirized across social media. Scholars and others have also weighed in on the matter. All have pointed out that Santa is not real and that Jesus was not white. The fact of the matter is that Jesus was a Jew born in ancient Israel and St. Nikolaos upon which the make-believe Santa character was based was from ancient Myra. The fact of the matter is that neither Jesus or St. Nikoloas were white; indeed both were likely to have had swarthy complexions. While it is easy to laugh at Kelly’s comments or to simply dismiss them as curiously misguided and ill-informed, they point to something even more significant that is worthy of discussion —the meaning of whiteness and its theological implications. And so, I offer some random thoughts for further reflection. Continue reading “What Does Jesus Have to Do with Whiteness? by Kelly Brown Douglas”
As I am transiting back into America from Asia, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela made his final transition from our collective human lives to the next dominion. (I mention my transition only to apologize for not continuing with the third installment on Vipassana; sometimes real life—or death –gets in the way).
Instead, I want to say a few words about the man President Obama referred to as “the last great hero of the 20th Century.” First the personal glimpse: I got to shake hands with Mandela when he included Malaysia among those countries he visited upon release from a 27 year prison term. It was 1991 and I felt the wind of change. In a small country like Malaysia it’s easier to get up close and personal with a national guest of this stature. No big deal (but I did tell my friends I wouldn’t wash my hand for a week!).
The beginnings of my own deep considerations about gender in Islam were under way at this same time and in fact got their biggest boost when I visited South Africa for the first time. The whole nation was marking 100 days in the Mandela presidency. Every fiber in the air sparkled with the intensity of change. I became friends with South African Muslims who had struggled side by side with comrades from all races and religions in the movement to tumble apartheid. Sometimes they’d had to stand against conservative members of their own Muslim community to form such alliances. Continue reading “Nelson Mandela to hell? by amina wadud”
I grew up in a white-middleclass-fundamentalist-Protestant community. As a result I learned to think of God as my Father, and Jesus as my savior, similar to the fairytale prince in shinning armor or the ultimate boyfriend. As an undergraduate studying Religious Studies, I learned of other ways to relate to the Divine and discovered how to be a Feminist Christian. However, many women with backgrounds like mine do not have the opportunities that I did to discover different and liberating pictures of God. As a result they must choose between a religious life that enforces patriarchal norms, or life as a “secular” feminist. A recent song by a modern rock band, Daughtry, “Waiting for Superman,” reveals how the dependence on a male savior prevents Christian women from claiming their own personhood, independent of a patriarch. Continue reading “Waiting for Jesus… I mean, Superman by Melinda Bielas”
Barbara Ardinger (one blogger here – watch for her “twist” on this in January!) and I were discussing that an explanation of the pagan year and our Sabbats might be in order. Sometimes when we are immersed in our own spiritual practice, we forget that those who read what we have written may not have a clear understanding of what forms the basis of the holy days we speak of in our articles. These holidays are called Sabbats. The word sabbat is of obscure etymology but was understood in the Middle Ages to mean a gathering of witches and heretics. The word comes from the Hebrew Shabbath meaning a day of rest. Christians use the word Sabbath for Sunday, their traditional day of worship. It is interesting to note this was not a term originally coined by pagans, themselves. It has been borrowed or adopted for use today.
Feminism and Religion 