Category: General

Is the Republican Party Platform Truly Pro-Life? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

As many feminists invest their life fighting for women’s rights to be the center of attention – no one could predict the occurrences of this election year.  In my previous post “Rape is Not a Political Platform – Rape is a Violent Crime!” Carol P. Christ made a comment about women’s issues and politics:

 “I have been waiting all my life for women’s issues to become central in an election campaign, but I guess I should have been more specific in my wish: this is not the format I imagined…”

Christ’s reaction is like so many others in the election; no one could have imagined such a bizarre and backwards slide being lobbied against women’s rights.   Issues being bantered around continue to be rooted in a purported pro-life stance.  This ranges from trans-vaginal ultrasounds, definitions of “legitimate” rape, and now using an Ob/Gyn’s “best guess” to define the gestational age of a baby from the time of a woman’s last period.  This is not a game – this is semantics, this is politics, this rhetoric, and frankly, this needs to stop. Continue reading “Is the Republican Party Platform Truly Pro-Life? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

“Curiosity” Matters by Sara Frykenberg

Sometimes science fictional curiosities paint an image of a larger matrix.  Sometimes they project cultural fears, tearing down and minimizing our webs of existence in new world schemes.  But whether a positive vision or negative one, science fiction, like feminism, is about crossing boundaries.

A little more than a year ago, I posted a blog in which I lamented the dismantling of NASA’s space shuttle program.  I asked my readers and myself, “Do feminists care about the Space Program,” unsure of what response I would receive.  Watching the space rover “Curiosity” land on Mars on August 6 of this year, I found myself returning to this question.  Re-membering my sincere belief that: “space travel is imagination incarnate,” my answer remains the same.

Yes, the human exploration of outer space matters.

Yes, I believe it is a feminist cosmological and theo/alogical concern.

Yes, yes, yes.  Curiosity Matters!  And this is why:

1.   The possible discovery that there is or was life on other planets in our solar system broadens our understanding of inter-connection and what it means to be a part of a larger “web” of existence. 

Curiosity, the “Mars Science Laboratory,” is explicitly concerned with the question, “Could Mars have once harbored life,” according to the NASA missions website.  The investigation is a part of ongoing efforts to understand the Martian surface, particularly since scientists discovered the actual existence of frozen water on the planet and the possible existence of “flows of liquid brine.”

Curiosity on the surface of Mars!

 

Water.  It is the necessary “stuff” of our bodies and planet.  We, like all of our Earth-creaturely relations, cannot exist without water.  Life is amazingly connected by this molecule; and it is amazing to discover this link on Mars.  Many feminist theologians and thealogians describe our existence as a kind of web or matrix: a system of difference and relationships that makes up a whole.  Life on Mars makes our web larger.  It discourages exclusive and human-centered cosmological claims, asking us to consider what other realities and what other experiences define the history of this vast and beautiful universe.  Continue reading ““Curiosity” Matters by Sara Frykenberg”

“LOVE PATRIARCHALISM”—ITS UNDERSIDE IS HATE by Carol P. Christ

Where patriarchalism trumps love, when push comes, shove often follows. The underside of love patriarchalism is hatred of the independence of women. 

We are told that it is the duty of a loving father and husband to protect his wife and children.  In exchange, good wives support their husbands and good children obey their fathers.  The bottom line of patriarchy is control.  The fight over abortion is a fight about men’s right to control women.

I have spent much of the past few weeks wondering why so many Republican men hate women.  Why do they want to deny the right to an abortion to a 12 year-old girl raped by her father, to a 21 year-old college student gang raped at a fraternity party, to a 33 year-old woman who submitted to a violent boyfriend she did not know had poked a hole in his condom, or a to a 41 year-old woman who offered a cup of coffee to the man who came to her house to fix the electricity, but who said “no” when he assaulted her.

I have also wondered why Republican men would deny the right to an abortion to 28 year-old married woman who got pregnant while taking the pill, to a 15 year-old girl who got carried away with her boyfriend, or even to a 35 year-old woman who got drunk one night and had sex without protection. We are all human aren’t we?  Birth control sometimes fails and sometimes women make mistakes. Apparently women are to be punished for both! Continue reading ““LOVE PATRIARCHALISM”—ITS UNDERSIDE IS HATE by Carol P. Christ”

Fun With Bumper Stickers By Barbara Ardinger

I was driving through one of the more conservative corners of Orange County, California, a couple weeks ago and went past a very pretty brick church with a tall, proud steeple and signs in the front yard giving times of worship services. I have no idea what kind of church it was, but as I went past, a car pulled out of the driveway and began following me. It’s a public street, I said to myself. Looks like a tony neighborhood. No need to worry about being followed. So I neither sped up nor slowed down. At the red light, the car behind me pulled up beside me and the driver, a young man, looked at me. As soon as the light changed, he sped ahead, changed lanes, then slowed down just a little. As I pulled up behind him at the next red light, a hand came out of the driver’s window. A finger was aggressively elevated.

Good grief! How had I insulted this driver? The guy made a right turn, I stewed and fussed a couple of miles…and then it dawned. My bumper stickers. I have four on my car. PROTECT OUR MOTHER EARTH—SHE’S THE ONLYONE WE’VEGOT. THANK GODDESS. BRIGHT BLESSINGS. And my current political bumper sticker: IMPEACH THE SUPREME COURT. (This last, of course, is a comment on the Citizens United decision, which many people think is doing incalculable damage to the political process.) For years, my friends have been telling me that at any gathering, they can always tell I’m there by the bumper stickers on my car. Continue reading “Fun With Bumper Stickers By Barbara Ardinger”

How Joan of Arc Crashed Through My Pagan Heart by Marcia Quinn Noren

Born into a Lutheran family of academicians, from earliest childhood I questioned their divisive, anti-Catholic rhetoric and systemic methods of indoctrination. The punitive consequences of my rebellion against their worldview were swift, harsh and unrelenting. Separated emotionally from my mother, subjected to abuse by a narcissistic father who considered himself a warlock, I subconsciously adopted the warrior archetype as a means of survival. Steely armor encased my heart, hidden beneath a feminine veil. When the feminist voices of the 1970’s grew into a force that would not be silenced, for the first time, I felt less alone.

Actively seeking alternative spiritual resources throughout the years that followed, I found a road with many tributaries rising up to meet me, as though that ancient Irish blessing had touched my life with grace. Soothed by nature’s elements, I have always felt the presence of divinity in the earth and sky, in the company of animals and invisible beings. Through studying Hindu and Buddhist traditions, I learned the value of going into the silence. A glimpse of the divine feminine appeared when Quan Yin poured compassion into my soul from the vessel she carries. An immersion into the Western Mystery Schools brought the Hebrew Tree of Life into focus, and there I found a balance of yin and yang, male and female in the Kabbalah’s Sephiroth. Continue reading “How Joan of Arc Crashed Through My Pagan Heart by Marcia Quinn Noren”

Theapoetics by Molly

I think there is a poet in me

she’s been hiding

I didn’t know she was there

I didn’t see her
I didn’t hear her

I didn’t watch for her
wait for her
listen to her
or know her

and yet, when I come to this place in the woods
and I sit down
and I open my mouth

poetry comes out

and I really think
she’s been here all along.

In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as theapoetics—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.” Continue reading “Theapoetics by Molly”

Sacred Outcry: A Poetic Trilogy by Mary Saracino

1.  NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN

Howling from the mountaintops
wailing from the riverbanks
scooping the moon into their waning wombs
the old women know that lies kill,
distortions maim, hope isn’t enough to feed starving
babies, school the ignorant, put an end to war.

Like Furies, the old ones rise,
clench their furious fists against the blazing sun;
like Harpies they roar, casting dire warnings
upon the winds of change; soothsaying Sibyls
decipher omens, portend the future, speak in baffling koans.
With dakini wisdom they cut through
illusion, vote in primaries, attend caucuses,
raise their voices against power, shatter
the corrupted ceilings that chafe the crowns
of their wizened heads.

The wandering Maenads cry: “This is no country
for old women.”

Medea calls down her midnight powers,
prays for revolution, strengthens the tired tongues
of memory. Eloquence isn’t enough to heal
a wounded country; sequined celebrities
can’t mend a nation’s odiferous past. Kali avenges
her sisters, the long-patient Queens & Crones,
Maidens & Mothers. The forgotten ones
wait and watch and warn: “Beware the hubris
of ages. Beware the greedy hand that grabs the golden fleece.” Continue reading “Sacred Outcry: A Poetic Trilogy by Mary Saracino”

If You’re Lucky, You get Old, Part II: Stories from the Yoga Mat by Marie Cartier

Yoga is about in the moment, and gifting yourself with that moment.

I am interning right now and teaching classes in yoga. I am teaching in a park– donation based yoga. The other morning, I had no students, so was sitting on my mat and just holding the space as we wait for these classes to catch on and students to come—if we build it, they will come! A woman sat at a picnic table near me. I started up a conversation with her about yoga. She told me her lower back was “frozen” from sitting at a computer and did I know anything she could do? Yes, gratefully I did! I demonstrated some postures to her—cat/cow, cobra, downward facing dog…but also just standing in mountain pose and feeling the pelvis tuck under the hips, tucking the chin slightly and lowering the shoulders. She did not move from the picnic table—in fact held onto the picnic table edges and said she was not ready for yoga. However, she also kept asking me questions and I kept answering and demonstrating.

The next day she returned with a mat, and took a physical class. And has been coming back to my class ever since.

How has increased body awareness through yoga led to a positive change in me? Continue reading “If You’re Lucky, You get Old, Part II: Stories from the Yoga Mat by Marie Cartier”

Rape is Not a Political Platform – Rape is a Violent Crime! By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Just when you think you have heard it all, here we go again – another politician with “open mouth-insert foot” syndrome.  Discussing his zero-tolerance policy for abortion, Missouri Representative Todd Akin made the following statement last Sunday about pregnancies that result from rape:

“from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare.  If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.  But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something.  I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

In an inadequate attempt to apologize and clarify his words, Akin stated that he meant to say “forcible rape.” This clarification fares no better nor does the fact that he later acknowledges that women “do become pregnant” during a “forcible rape.”  It is interesting to note what Akin considers to be “rare.”  According to the Washington Post, approximately 5% of rape victims become pregnant.  Akin reduced this to a statistic – 1 out of 32,000 women.  This, for Akin, is a rare occurrence.

Stating that a woman’s body is capable of preventing pregnancy in the case of “legitimate rape” demonstrates how out of touch politicians are and further (re)affirms the bigotry that exists within our political system.  The same politicians who have waived a “war against women” this year, try to promote policies that exercise control over what a woman can and cannot do with her body; policies that are  based on ill-advised misinformation.  Decisions politicians make for a woman – what she can and cannot do with her body – are rooted in personal faith beliefs, party-line agendas, and supporters (campaign financing dollars and lobbyists).  This year, a woman’s body has become a platform for votes.

Inasmuch as I would like to think Akin’s statement is an isolated event, Garance Franke-Ruta points out that this is not the first time a politician made a statement about rape victims and pregnancies: Continue reading “Rape is Not a Political Platform – Rape is a Violent Crime! By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Angrboða, Her Children, and Our Shadow Selves by Deanne Quarrie

In the land of the Northern Europeans, the very first beings were the giants and giantesses. I call them the Jötunn folk for they come from the realm of Jötunheimr. One story that I find particularly fascinating is that of Angrboða and her three children. She is known as the Hag of Iron Wood, one of the witches of Iron Wood who are a group of giantesses that gave birth to fierce wolves. Angrboða took Loki as her consort, and as a product of that union, gave birth to Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Hela.

Angrboða was called Hag, but this comes to us in the same way as Hagia, meaning wise. She was the tribal wise woman of the Nine Clans of Iron Wood, often referred to as the chief of chieftains. The Iron Wood Clan were known to be werewolves – some staying in animal form, others shapeshifting at will to other forms, some were feathered and some scaled. Continue reading “Angrboða, Her Children, and Our Shadow Selves by Deanne Quarrie”