General – Page 50 – Feminism and Religion

Trees Scent and Sing for Life by Sara Wright

On November 6^th, the day after the election in the middle of writing through my own anger/grief I suddenly stopped and got up – heeding that inner voice that often interrupted my train of thought. Picking up the lights I opened the door to adorn my young cedar for the very first time ever.

I planted this twelve-inch-tall seedling in 2020 to replace my original Cedar Guardian Tree that had been decimated by deer during a year-long absence. To my astonishment in four years, this seedling had become a seven-foot-high Guardian Tree. Of course, in the interim I have carefully tended this cedar, watering her, talking with her, touching her, loving her, calling her ‘my guardian’ but this species is very slow growing so even as I began to festoon the tree with lights, I experienced a sense of awe. I was of course talking with this tree as I adorned her… I told her that I would be lighting her as a Tree for Life.

When the air around the tree suddenly exploded with the scent of cedar, I experienced a powerful sense of relatedness with this cedar, and with all nature that is impossible to describe. That she was communicating with me using her own words moved me deeply. Although I have had these experiences before each one remains a revelation, especially when I have one during times of deep distress. When I plugged in the lights, I saw the unintentional spiral that I had created when I wound the strings so carefully around and across her delicate fronds. Just perfect I thought as a breeze rustled through her branches making the lights twinkle for a moment.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Green Solutions To The Greek Economic Crisis: We Are The 99%!

This post was originally published on May 28th, 2012

A green solution to the economic crisis insists that people and the environment can be saved together. We must dare to envision prosperity in conjunction with sustainability, social justice, nonviolence, and participatory democracy.

A rational analysis would make it clear that the Greek people did not “create” the economic crisis. Yet the poor and middle classes are being asked to “pay” for it. There is massive corruption in the public sector in Greece. But this should not blind us to the fact that the Greek people do not bear the major responsibility for creating the crisis. Those responsible include:

the international money interests (the 1%) who at this very moment are charging 26% interest on the Greek national debt and “hedging” their “bets” (betting for and against a complete collapse of the Greek economy) and hoping to “win” (make money on their bets) in either case;
the international military industrial complex (which US President Eisenhower warned might one day control the world) that is selling more arms to Greece per capita than to any other country in Europe;
the industrial interests in the larger countries in Europe which viewed the eurozone as an open market to sell their products (thus raising the GDP in industrialized countries like Germany);
European leaders who promote the interests of their own players in the international financial, military, and industrial marketplace above the good of the whole;
the Greek governmental elite (the 10%?) who have pocketed bribes and stolen money from public coffers;
and finally the Greek people (the 99% or the 90%) who have participated in or benefited in small ways from a corrupt system. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Green Solutions To The Greek Economic Crisis: We Are The 99%!”

You Lied to Me About God, a memoir by Jamie Marich, PHD, book review by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This was a hard book for me to review. Perhaps because she writes about such difficult issues and yet she does so in a compelling and at times even humous manner. I feel a responsibility and yet find it hard to capture how she manages a breezy manner while discussing heavy material. Perhaps, even though our backgrounds are vastly different, I was also relating to so much of what she said. Jamie also covers so much ground; it is hard to pick out individual aspects to discuss.

As a child Jamie Marich was caught in the web of different religious systems, Catholicism from her mother and Evangelical from her father. They were at soul-hurting odds with each other (both parents and religions). Each one proclaimed they were the one true path so there was the ever-present threat of choosing the wrong one and facing a parent’s wrath along with that of eternal damnation. She labels this spiritual trauma. It cuts to the soul of a person being trapped into a no-win situation. It’s a conflict-driven, shame-filled, guilt-ridden way to grow up.

As Above, So Below—A Cosmic Tale by Mary Gelfand

It was when I was studying to become a Witch that I first encountered the phrase ‘As Above, So Below,’ which I now know to be a paraphrase of a ninth century Hermetic text from an Arabic source. I liked this phrase from the beginning as it expressed something I believed but had struggled to articulate so elegantly. I believe that there is a sacred connection between our earthy human existence and the grandeur of the cosmos—our very bodies are composed of star dust.

I was delighted to discover a more specific description of that connection in the Journey of the Universe, by cosmologist Brian Swimme & Mary Tucker, founder of the Forum on Religion & Ecology at Yale. They discuss the creation of the universe in terms of natural cycles of expansion and contraction, which they also refer to as ‘attraction,’ or gravity. They write “All of space and time and mass and energy began as a ‘single point’ that was trillions of degrees hot and that instantly rushed apart. (p. 4)” That expansion is on-going, billions of years later.

Hecate’s Moon by Sara Wright

I spent hours
writing
you snaked by
underground roots
entering my story
with your
forked stick
‘witches’ are a
lie that christians
made up
to legitimize
harm done
to our kind
Artists, Writers,
Healers,
Visionaries,
Trees,
(men too)
Women whose
Difference
others defined.
Nature defiled.

Harris Could Not Outrun 2000 Years of Patriarchy by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I made this poster 8 years ago and am devastated to have to dust it off again. The safety pins came from a British idea when Brexit was passed. People would wear the safety pins on their clothes to let anyone feeling vulnerable know that they would be “safe” with them.

The political finger pointing for Harris’ loss is beyond noxious. I have heard all manner of scapegoats; Biden, the Obamas, VP candidate Walz, Harris for saying too much of one thing, not enough of another, the progressives, Liz Cheney and even George Clooney. . . .blah blah blah

How can we make sense of a world where women voted for a misogynistic abuser. Black and brown people voted for a white supremist. Latinos voted for a policy of mass deportations targeting their brethren. Youth voted for a climate denier affecting their future. And so on. Think of all the women who voted for a world where they, their daughters and their granddaughters can be denied basic healthcare. It’s a true-to-life Cinderella scenario whose stepmother cut the toes off her own daughters to please a prince. Or Chinese mothers who would bind their own’s daughter’s feet, thereby crippling them in the service of marriage.

What Happens When Hate Wins? by Sara Wright

Do the sandhill cranes stop singing?
Do the junipers cease to release their scent?
Do the stars fall into the sea?
Does the white moon weep??

I want to keep writing stories…

The wind still ruffles fine sand in the wash.
Cottontails leap, jumping through twilight.
Scaled quail still peep as they scurry over red ground.
The thrasher gobbles his suet without restraint.
A woodpecker taps at my window.

I want to keep writing stories…

Unknown History Is My Sweet Spot by Michelle Cameron

“I never knew that,” is a comment I often hear from my readers. “Why don’t I know that?”

Finding what I call my “sweet spot” in historical fiction – writing stories of Jewish history that are relatively unknown to my Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike – was a total fluke.

I had completed my first published book – a verse novel about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, called In the Shadow of the Globe – and was considering my next project. I thought perhaps I could write about the woman I was named for – my great-aunt Masha, who, with her red hair and fiery personality, seemed like a promising subject to base a novel around. My mother had told me stories of how her family had become wealthy with huge forests in an estate on the Russia-Poland border. Mom spoke wistfully about her, recounting the second-hand tale of the diamonds that used to flash in Masha’s hair and how my grandmother had adored her.

But Mom had passed on and I had only one source to call upon – a genealogy that a distant cousin of mine had compiled of the various branches of my extensive maternal family.

And as I opened the genealogy, I stopped short at the first passage.

The Future of Sorjuanista Studies in the Americas: Challenges and Possibilities by Theresa A. Yugar

I had nearly resolved to leave the matter in silence;
yet although silence explains much by the emphasis of leaving all unexplained, because it is a negative thing, one must name the silence,
so that what it signifies may be understood.
Failing that, silence will say nothing,
for that is its proper function, to say nothing.[i]
La Respuesta/The Answer (al Soldado, or The Soldier)
Sor (Sr.) Juana Inés de la Cruz
(November 12, 1651 – April 18, 1695)

Today, I honor the legacy of mid-17th century Mexican Catholic nun, scholar, and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She was born in the central valley of Mexico in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, now in modern-day Mexico. She was the daughter of Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana and Don Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. They had three daughters: María, Juana, and Josefa. Doña Isabel also had three other children – Antonia, Inés, and Diego – with Diego Ruiz Lozano. Sor Juana Inés was raised with her siblings on their family’s hacienda of Nepantla which was managed by their strong-willed mother Doña Isabel.

The US Election Results and Justice: What Will You Do? A Jewish Feminist Perspective by Ivy Helman

I met with a new friend/colleague of mine this past week. We were discussing the election results, and I was discussing the work I do in the field of religion. Living and teaching in Central Europe, I have quite a lot of experience navigating the study of religion in a place that is quite atheist and/or actually anti-religion. In fact, it has been somewhat of a struggle to have the study program, Gender Studies, in which I teach, recognize its importance. Many of my colleagues, I think, are under the impression that religion is personally not important and/or just not that important in general. Yet, as I have mentioned here, and as my new friend brought up as we sat over coffee, religion underpins so many aspects of our patriarchal society.